Nineteen-Eighty FOOD
by Immortal x Snow
Summary: Nineteen-Eighty FOOD: a cafe run by Alfred Jones and dedicated entirely to literature puns. Home to shy Matthew and his adopted father Francis. And ground zero for Arthur Kirkland's latest literary breakthrough. It's a perfectly normal place, believe us. Just try their special: William Butter Yeast. Human!AU, FACE family, no pairings, all madness. Collab with The Goliath Beetle.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: So, after a (very interesting and hilarious) series of events, The (wonderful) Goliath Beetle and I decided to do a collab about Alfred opening a cafe/bar with a boatload of food puns. We will be alternating chapters. Since I wrote this chapter, the A/N will be in italics. Hers will be in bold. That way, everyone can tell who did what. Capisce? (: Also, because I'm from the States and she's from India, I will be writing in primarily American English. She will use British English._

 _Of course, I say I wrote this chapter, but since I'm bad at humor, you can safely assume that if you laugh aloud at something, my partner in crime wrote it. The way we're going about this, we wind up coming up with funny scenarios and writing dialogue at the same time, with one of us doing one person's dialogue and the other writing the other character's response. It's just a blast that way. It's like improv._

 _Human names will be used in this fic, of course. Romulus Vargas, Helena Karpusi, and Hatshepsut Hassan are Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, and Ancient Egypt, respectively._

 _We also played around with character ages. Although I usually write Matthew as older than Alfred, he is younger here: they are 17 and 21, respectively._

 _Finally, this fic is just hella fun. I find it incredibly important to point this out. I once woke up to 44 messages from GB full of food puns. That is what comes out of fics like this. :'D_

 _Trigger warnings: domestic abuse, horrible food puns, and Shakesbeers. (I am actually serious about the abuse. Please read at your own risk.)_

* * *

"You're fucking on, man."

Gilbert cackled and took another swig of his now-flat _Radler._

"Yeah, and I'm the queen of England. There's no way in hell you can actually pull this off."

The grinning young man downing Kentucky bourbon from a chipped shotglass decorated with drawings of the New York skyline, complete with American flags surrounding the silver-plated rim, couldn't possibly plan to follow through with this. One minute, he was saying happiness consisted in having multiple chins in his most serious faux-intellectual voice; the next, he had decided to sell his apartment and go on a Mormon mission to southern Utah. ("You're not even a Mormon, man." "Yeah, but they have cool bikes 'n pamphlets 'n suits 'n stuff, like s'riously.")

But at Gilbert's challenge, Alfred had a fist on the table, stars in his eyes (too much bourbon for him, Gilbert figured), and a determined if downright obnoxious grin.

"This. sounds. so. awesome. I have to do this. You have no idea."

"If you want to be so broke your grandkids'll starve, sure."

"Are you drunk? I can totally pull this off."

"I want some of whatever you're smoking."

"I've got some—"—Alfred finished off his bourbon and set down his shotglass next to ones from Texas and Idaho that had earlier that night held tequila and vodka, respectively—"—Wilde weed. Get it? Like Oscar Wilde?"

Gilbert almost choked on his beer.

"Man." Alfred pushed back his chair and tried to stand, his legs wobbly and the world shakier. Gilbert's house seemed to be quaking, as if a giant had picked it up and decided to shake the two young men out of it. So Alfred thought, at least. He liked the idea of a giant messing with his friend's house. He put a hand on the sticky wooden table (a piece Gilbert's younger brother Ludwig had made by hand). "I am so excited. I'mma get started on this the second I get home."

Gilbert stared at him for a moment, his mind blank; then, he shook his head and cracked up. More glory for him, anyway, if little Alfie failed. Which he certainly would.

"Just one thing." Alfred tried to walk around the table, now covered with wet rings from their sweaty glasses, to Gilbert's chair but wound up plopping down in the one (probably Ludwig's) beside it. He put his hand back down on the table and leaned in toward the white-haired man.

"Sure. Go ahead, as long as it doesn't involve chins or missionaries."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. You get into my Wilde weed or something?" Alfred guffawed. "No, no, bu' really, man. If I get this thing to work. Which I totally will. No problemo, mi amigo. I got this whole damn thing in the bag. The whole fucking enchilada."

"Dude. Get to the point."

"This enchilada's takin' OFF. And when it does, you're gonna call me your superior for the rest of your life. And ever after."

Gilbert rolled his eyes. Alfred, who had been leaning in closer and closer throughout his drunken monologue, now had his elbow digging into his side. If the kid couldn't turn a profit with this ridiculous clusterfuck of a scheme, he might be able to twist some old lady's arm into buying his stuff.

"Fine. I'll even kiss your shoes."

"Really? Sweet."

"That was a joke, asshole."

Alfred had already risen and snatched up the coat from the back of the chair. He shook like a runway model on too-high platform shoes as he walked, head held high, to the front door.

"Get ready to pucker up," he said, giggling at his own joke, before smirking and slamming the door.

Gilbert pulled back the blinds a little and watched the blond collapse to his knees beside the flickering sidewalk streetlights and puke up what looked like everything he'd ever eaten. The young man then stood back up; shrugged; and continued to strut back to his apartment along the dark street, deserted but for the few cars that passed the young man by (slowing to a putt-putt pace when their headlights shone on his stumbling figure).

The older man hardly heard his brother walk up the creaky back stairs and ask where in the world his coat had gotten to.

He had a bet to worry about.

* * *

"Alfred, _mon chou_ , my darling, how are you? You must not be faring all that well, since you are completely unaware that it is currently three in the morning."

"Francis, I dunno how to make food."

"I'm glad you've finally seen the light." Francis yawned and rubbed one side of his face, his five o' clock shadow scratching his palm. "But why are you telling me this—no, Matthew, it's fine; go back to sleep."

"No, no, Francis, you don' get it." Alfred poured himself another cup of burned Folgers, spilling half of it on his couch (a Craigslist find), and downed it within seconds despite the spinning of his stomach. He then wiped the coffee on his hands off on his dirty sweatpants. "I dunno how to make Hemingway Hashbrowns."

"All this time I've known you, Alfred, and I've never realized you talk in your sleep."

"I'm wide awake." He groaned as he rubbed his head with ink-stained fingers. When he'd stumbled back into his second-floor apartment an hour ago, Alfred hadn't been able to muster the energy to walk back to his bedroom and work at his desk. Only his couch; a T-Mobile phone book (which someone had tossed on his American flag doormat one morning), generally used as a doorstop but now beneath a piece of crumpled cardstock; and an endless supply of coffee stood at his disposal. "But I need help. I can't figure out how to make Edgar Allan Poedding or Agatha Crispies."

"What." Francis turned on his bedside lamp and, sitting up, leaned against the headboard. His adopted son Matthew stood in the corner beside the door, but he tiptoed out of the room the moment the older man smiled and waved at him. Once his son's door had clicked shut, Francis's smile switched back to a frown. "Say that again. In English this time."

"Not French?"

"You speak French like a Spanish cow."

"And I'm the hungover one?" Alfred sniffed. "Maybe you need some of my coffee. It's fresh Folgers."

"It's an idiom, you—never mind." Francis didn't dare comment on Alfred's choice of "coffee." "What exactly did you do? Were you and Gilbert playing drinking games again?"

"Oh, come on, don't tell me you don't do shots every time Ludwig frowns and crosses his arms. You have to set them on fire whenever he starts muttering to himself in some weird aggressive language, too. I always win, of course."

Francis sighed and began to comb his fingers through his blond hair, pulling it back into a ponytail. His exhaustion had begun to tap on—no, assault—his shoulder. Fifty-hour workweeks at _L'Inconnu_ just overwhelmed him these days, as did the bills that, no matter how much overtime he took on, he barely paid with two mouths to feed. And two bodies to clothe, of course.

"Come on, Alfred. I have to be up for work in two hours. What the hell did you do?"

"I made a bet that I would open a cafe based off books and writers. Just think of the puns, Francis. The puns. I have some great ones so far. Here, lemme read 'em to you—"

Matthew came running back into Francis's room at the sound of his phone crashing to the floor—and, much louder, his father clutching his sides and laughing his ass off.

"Hello? Francis? I know you're awestruck by my brilliance, but I need some, y'know, verbal praise here."

"You must be so drunk, Alfred. Machiavelli Mojitos? Dostowhisky?" Francis giggled. "No, no, they're perfect. Simply _parfait_. That's another one we could do, you know. Proust Parfaits."

Matthew blinked, a little horrified. Finally, finally, the man he was supposed to call his father had done it.

He'd gone completely mad.

And it got worse.

"But you know you can't do this without me. It's not like you can run a cafe, anyway." By this point, Francis had swung himself out of bed and was tying back his stressed-forged ponytail. "You don't know a thing about food, just drinks. You need me if you have any hope of seeing Gilbert make out with your shoes. Besides, my current job is just horrendous. The manager has me making burned potato chips and has the audacity to call them French fries. The audacity, Alfred."

Matthew could hear his friend's laughter on the other end of the line. In his excitement, Francis must have turned up the volume on his phone. That, or Alfred really had downed five too many Jack and Cokes.

Most likely both.

"So we're on?"

"But of course, Alfred. I want to see this happen. No, I need to. I've been dreaming of handing back the ridiculous uniform they make me wear at work, anyway. This is so exciting. Yes, I'll be over first thing after I take Matthew to school in the morning. Think, I have time to take my own son to school for once." Francis smiled at Matthew, who had long since fallen back in the small pink chair on the other side of the room, chin on his knees, trying to process everything and figure out just what in the world went into a Julius Caesar Salad.

"Okay then." The younger man nearly tripped over his chair on his way to the kitchen for another dose of caffeine. "I'll just be here coming up with more awesomeness. No rush or anything. I just bought the space beneath me that they've had open for the last, like, five years or whatever. Man, this is gonna be the best damn thing."

"You—wait. Never mind." Francis decided he probably didn't want to know how Alfred secured a building deal in the middle of the night. "But how exactly are you paying for this?"

Matthew twisted a few strands of hair in his fingers.

"Lemonade stands when I was seven, duh. Opening a bar or cafe thing is my dream. What I told all my kindergarten teachers I wanted to do, what I signed in people's yearbooks when I graduated from high school—I've been planning this shit for ages. Gilbert just kinda put the icing on the cake. Or the cherry on top of the sundae. The whipped cream on the shake. The Shakespeare Shake, I mean. Ooh, we could cross shakes and root beers and call them Shakesbeers. Whatcha think of that?"

Francis snorted and sat back down on his bed, shrugging and gesturing to his son that he'd be off the phone soon. Not that he wanted Alfred to shut up, of course. He spewed pure gold hungover, apparently.

He made a mental note of that (useful) quirk.

"Okay, then." Francis said after ten more minutes of scheming with his friend. "Don't give yourself a van Strokum coming up with more puns. _À bientôt_."

On one side of the street, father and son looked at each other. On the other, Alfred sat in his apartment, surrounded by home remedies for hangovers and the beginnings of a recipe for More than Peas.

Something, at any rate, was happening, though Francis and Matthew at least weren't quite sure what.

* * *

"I need two Franz Coffees at three near the bar with some Ketchup in the Rye to go at the counter—got that?"

"Yeah, no prob, and I have your Greene Beans and Holden Cauliflower."

Matthew shifted his heavy backpack as he pulled open the door. Even at the front of the room, he could hear Alfred and Francis shouting orders to the cooks in the back and to each other, one balancing plates of pastries and hearty dishes on round black trays and the other mixing drinks at the small bar in the middle of the cafe, which smelled of strawberries, potatoes, and other random foodstuffs, all overwhelmed by something even better.

The smell of freshly bought and opened books.

The shelves all along the cafe creaked beneath the tomes big and small, old and new, famous and indie. When he had first filled them with the volumes, Matthew had worried that the wooden shelves would collapse if he did so much as run his finger along them to remove some dust. For the whole month and a half that Nineteen-Eighty FOOD—Alfred's title, of course, given the unnecessary capitalization—had served all kinds of punny foods and lots of chuckles on the side for both the staff and the customers, everything had held together, physical and otherwise. Against all odds and despite all doubts (and he'd had several), the cafe drew in plenty of patrons, first-timers and regulars, and actually turned a profit, giving all of them decent money—including him.

But the teenager didn't think much about the money (aside from what it saved Francis; he couldn't let the man pay for everything, after all) he earned. He came for the books.

And because the cafe had, oddly enough, turned into his home.

Every afternoon, upon leaving school, Matthew arrived at the cafe an hour early for his shift, just so he could sit at his table right beside the bar and read. He liked to pick different things, perusing Waugh one day and Sinclair the next. At first, Francis had tried to talk to him about his day at school—did his calculus test go okay? would his history teacher ever leave his class alone? had the kids in his science class spoken to him yet?—but he'd soon learned to give Matthew his hour with his written words and leave out all spoken ones until his shift started.

"Are you sure you want to work?" Francis had asked when his son had first approached him. "You don't have to, you know. You could do more things at school, or you could take more time on your homework or go spend time with kids your own age."

Matthew had nodded. "I know. It's okay. It'd keep me busy. And it'd keep me from being trouble."

"Oh, Matthew." Francis tucked his son's hair behind his ear. "You're never any trouble. I don't want you to suggest that you are, okay?"

He nodded again. He nodded to Francis a lot. It saved him words that he figured he would have trouble saying.

"Whatcha got today, Mattie?"

Matthew looked up from his book into Alfred's grinning face.

"Calvino." He held up the thin paperback and showed it to his friend, who was putting a glass of something on his table. " _If on a Winter's Night a Traveler_."

"Hm. Any good?"

"I haven't gotten far enough yet. It's kinda weird, actually. All confusing and back-and-forth. I guess I just can't understand it."

"You've got a better chance than I do at getting that literature stuff. Anyway. You should try that." Alfred pointed to the glass in front of Matthew. "I just made it for fun. Tell me how awesome it is."

Matthew obeyed.

"Alfred, did you—did you put alcohol in this?" He held the glass to his nose, took a deep breath, and then made a face.

"Sh." The older of the two friends winked. "If anyone asks, it's a Jack London Fog."

"But that's not what it looks like at all, Al—or, okay, fine, you could just leave and let me sit here with contraband beverages. That's fine, too."

Matthew muttered the last half of his sentence to himself and, pushing the suspicious (but, he had to admit, delicious) drink to the other end of the table, picked up his book and continued to read. The chatter of customers at booths on the other side of the cafe providing reassuring background noise, he slipped into a dream, his mind wandering and his heart straying but always returning to where he was, safe in the home he'd made for himself for a few hours. Where he could watch people, but never have to speak to them. Where he could hear them and understand everything that ran through their minds and captured their hearts, without ever having to reveal any of himself as collateral for that intimacy.

Where everything had to be as brief as it was in reality—for within what seemed like ten minutes, Francis was tapping on his shoulder, and the dream ended just as quickly as he'd fallen asleep. Still, the one-sided friendships lingered in his thoughts as he closed the pages and followed the man to the backroom, wishing he could have just five more minutes in his literary bed. Wanting to hit the snooze button again and again, thinking that if he pressed it hard enough, it might just break the alarm clock altogether.

And then he could remain in the only world where people stayed and waited for him.

* * *

Alfred gave the bar one final swipe with his rag and waved to the last customer leaving the cafe. Beside him, Francis threw away a pair of plastic gloves he'd been wearing while making a batch of Agatha Crispies for the next morning, and Matthew cleared the back row of tables. Another busy day had gone and passed, leaving the three men exhausted but oddly rejuvenated, enriched and refreshed from their work. Something about leaving the cafe at night with sore feet, heavy eyelids, and tired voices made them want to wake up in the morning and do it all over again. Rinse and repeat, just without the monotony.

Every day, new customers came in, taken aback by the puns and requesting in quiet, shy whispers the "denouement" when they wanted to pay and leave. Despite their confusion, they returned within a week (whether for the food, the humor, or the atmosphere, no one ever knew; Francis claimed the former, Alfred the second, and Matthew the lattermost), and Alfred began to befriend many of them, especially the elderly trio of Romulus Vargas, Helena Karpusi, and Hatshepsut Hassan. When he didn't have an overflowing pile of drink orders, he sat with them at their table by the window. Their favorite cafe, he found out, had been closed after some guy named Sadık Adnan had bought it, leading them to find a replacement. Helena and Hatshepsut had been worrying that Romulus would make them hang out in his living room every afternoon for the rest of their lives, when they'd walked past Nineteen-Eighty FOOD just days after it'd opened.

After raising their eyebrows at the bright sign, American flags hanging in the windows, and groan-inducing menu, they'd taken a single bite of Francis's food and had one chat with Alfred. They never turned back (although Romulus still kept his living room clean and ready just in case. He liked to have people over), even when Alfred begged Romulus for more war stories, Hatshepsut for old mummy movies, and Helena for her medical advice.

"I don't want my doctor to be a hypocrite, you know. Can you help me find one who hasn't taken the oath?"

"Hippocrates, Alfred. They all take the Hippocrates Oath." She'd smile at him. "Believe me, you don't want a doctor who hasn't."

"Wait, why is it plural?"

One day, when they'd finally sorted out Alfred's problems with homophones, the young man had decided to pull out the coolest looking book on the shelf and show it to Helena.

"See, the cover is all worn and the writing's faded and it looks so cool and stuff. It's old, so you'd totally know something about it, right?"

Helena would take it and make a face—and not at Alfred's quip about her age.

"Why do you have Aristotle in your cafe?"

"Oh, I didn't know that was Aristotle. I just thought it was a cool book that I couldn't read."

"If you're going to have Greek philosophy, you want Plato."

"Why'sat?"

She'd wrinkle her nose. "Because Aristotle wasn't even Greek. He was Macedonian."

"Macewhatian?"

Still, the three elderly customers visited the cafe regularly and even complained if Alfred didn't drop by their table at least once. To miss the rush and have more time with their newfound, naive friend, they'd stop by around three-thirty, right when Matthew came in from school, sometimes arriving at the same time as the teenager. He'd hold the door for them and smile and tell them that yes, his day had been fine and Alfred wasn't too busy and weren't they just having nice weather that week. No matter how quickly he'd scuttle off to his booth with his books, however, Matthew still found the three fascinating and often peered at them over the top of his tome. Not talking. Not even listening most of the time. Just watching.

As he did now with the strange man that had appeared at the front window.

* * *

Arthur Kirkland sighed, his breath turning white in front of his face as he swaddled himself in his coat. Adjusting the tight strap of his leather bag, he trudged down the dreary street, his feet soaked through his shoes from walking through deep puddles. Typical. Whenever he wanted to stay inside to work, the sun would shine through his window and the weather would be perfect for an inspirational walk through the park near his house. The rare times he decided to leave for a change of scenery, however, the rain always came down. In sheets, of course. Veritable cats and dogs pouring down yowling on his head.

Normally, Arthur preferred clouds and light drizzle. Even a little breeze with fog or mist in the morning pleased him. He worked best in what most people called gloom. Thrived in it.

Except when he got caught right in the middle of it.

The man struggled in vain to keep his umbrella under control in the wind. Every few seconds, it inverted, splattering cold water all over his face, until the metal cobweb-like frame inside snapped. Arthur swore and threw the useless umbrella behind him on the street near all the others that his fellow rain-soaked souls had abandoned either on the sidewalk or in the overflowing trashcans.

If only he'd been smarter and worn his waterproof jacket. But, as usual when he was struggling with his work, his head was in the clouds—literally and metaphorically—and he had only a flimsy hood to shield himself from the rain.

Time to find somewhere to take shelter.

Arthur turned left at the next intersection and hurried beneath the overhang of the apartment complex on his right. If he had to, he could walk home, of course, but the idea of spending ten more minutes in the storm without an umbrella hardly enticed him to turn around and head for his secluded neighborhood. If he could just spend an hour working and drying off—but all of the businesses on this street had closed within the past 20 minutes.

Just his fucking luck.

Then, like an angel descending into the late-night darkness—no, no, he couldn't stand cheesy, overused similes like that—a neon sign just before the next corner caught his eye. Arthur looked at the sign in the window beside him. The Starbucks had just closed.

No other choice, then.

He squinted at the foggy window of the last building he wanted to be standing in front of. Neon signs weren't exactly his thing, nor were the bright blue words flickering (the sign must have been going out, he figured) above his head. Nineteen-Eighty FOOD? Like _1984_ , the novel? What kind of a joke was the owner playing?

Arthur shivered. The inside of the cafe—he assumed that was what it was—shone with soft, quaint lights. The entire place seemed to radiate warmth. Or maybe he was just that cold. Yes, definitely just cold.

Home looked increasingly inviting with every moment he lingered outside the cafe. Surely the mad dash home wouldn't kill him. Perhaps it would slaughter his dignity, but so would sitting in such a tacky place.

He was just turning on his heel when a quiet voice came from the door.

"Um, hi there."

Arthur glanced over his shoulder and wished right away that he hadn't. Not because the boy—or young man?—standing on the threshold repulsed him in any way. The blond didn't have a broken nose or twisted mouth or anything of the sort. In reality, he looked just about average for a teenager, though more awkward than usual with his red face and uncertain eyes and messy short ponytail.

That awkwardness killed Arthur.

He couldn't help but pity him.

Damn it.

"Hello."

In response to Arthur's greeting, the teenager opened the door a little more.

"I—we—well, they thought you might want to come inside because it's so rainy out. Francis and Alfred, I mean. Not that you know who they are or anything." His face turned even redder, the color spreading to his ears. "Well, yeah. You can come in if you want. It is raining pretty hard."

Shit.

"I guess." Arthur thought about asking if they would close soon but thought better of it. Might as well keep them as late as he could. He followed the youth inside and looked around for somewhere quiet and alone to sit.

There. A big booth in the very back.

Without waiting for someone to try to force him to sit elsewhere, Arthur hurried to the booth as quickly as he could while remaining dignified, removed his jacket, and sat down with his bag beside him. As he was removing his Macbook, a positively horrific man with his curly hair tied back with a blue ribbon appeared beside him with a menu.

"Look what the rain dragged in," he said, sliding the menu in front of Arthur, who was dripping water all over the table. "You look absolutely miserable."

"Go away."

"And perfectly friendly, too." He laughed. "Are you certain I can't get you anything warm to drink? I'm almost tempted to put it on the house, you look so awful."

Arthur glared at him, thinking he could frown the man away. Unfortunately, the opposite seemed to be true. The longer and harder he stared at him, the wider the strange, catlike man smiled.

"Let me see what you have first," Arthur said, waving the other man away. "Go away for now."

"But of course. My name's Francis, if you need anything. Or you can ask Alfred. I'm not willing to abandon poor Matthew to that terrible stare of yours."

The ponytailed teenager—Arthur assumed he was Matthew—stared from the other side of the cafe. Then, he dropped his gaze and clenched his hands into fists when Francis had his back turned to them both.

Arthur raised an eyebrow but said nothing, more concerned with warming himself and getting some work done. Inside, the cafe aroused a kind of wonder in him, with its dusty books and quill pens scattered throughout the shelves sagging beneath the weight of the volumes, thick and thin alike. When he took a deep breath, his heart beat faster at the smell of brand-new pages and ink. He put one hand down on the grey table and found it clean, without a trace of fingerprints or crumbs. Even the small lamp swinging above his head, its blue glass shade decorated with etchings of typewriter keys, cast the perfect light: not too bright as to blind him, but not too dim as to keep him fumbling around in the dark.

The neon sign and creepy waiter aside, he had stumbled upon heaven. A cozy paradise with everything he needed to thrive, even rain pelting the windows with him inside, snug and safe.

He turned on his computer, sentences and phrases already queuing in his head and falling into place by themselves too fast for him to control.

How the hell had he never found this place before? No more than fifteen minutes from his house at a Sunday-morning-stroll pace, and he'd never seen it. The thought of all the trouble working in here could have saved him made him a little queasy. No matter, Arthur supposed. He'd make up for it with a long night of work, business hours be damned. They couldn't possibly throw him out.

As his laptop booted up, Arthur peered around the corner to make sure Francis wasn't watching him; then, he peered at the menu he had left in the middle of the table.

And opened his eyes wide in horror.

"All righty then, sir." Another man—where were they all coming from?—popped up at his elbow. "Can I get you something to drink? Not that you need anything, considering how much you're dripping all over the place, but anyway."

When Arthur didn't respond, Alfred shrugged and pointed to a long list on the menu marked "Beverages."

"I'm still making stuff at the bar if you really need some help with work. E.B. White Russians don't take me too long to throw together."

Still no response. At some point, Francis returned and started pointing to other things on the menu, which was shaking in Arthur's hands.

"You still look miserable. Try a Franz coffee. Franz coffees solve problems."

"They'll give you a new outlook on life." Alfred nodded. "Literally."

When Arthur finally looked up at them, Alfred took a step back.

"Do you mean to tell me," Arthur said, his voice clipped, "that these are all a bunch of stupid, childish jokes?"

"They're not stupid. They're genius. Just look at these. James and the Giant Peach Joyce, like James Joyce and _James and the Giant Peach_. It's two puns in one. And it's peach juice. That, too."

"And there's the Midsummer Night's Drink," said Francis with a giggle.

Arthur took a deep breath. It couldn't be that bad. Not everything on this menu could be a joke. Just look at—

"But what about Baked Alaska? That's pretty normal." He folded his arms, satisfied.

"That one is pretty hard for most people." Alfred preened. "But check it out—it's for Alaska Young. Y'know, from the John Green book?"

Arthur sat in silence for a second too long. Then, he slammed his Macbook shut. Idyllic and inspirational or not, this place wouldn't work.

"Thank you very much for absolutely nothing."

Alfred snorted and elbowed Francis, who kept grinning at Arthur as he put on his jacket, picked up his bag, and pushed past the two on his way to the door.

Until he slipped and nearly fell on his face, Arthur hadn't realized two things.

One, just how much water he had tracked into the cafe, and, by extension, just how wet the streets had gotten.

Two, that Matthew had stayed in the room the entire time and had strong enough arms to catch him and keep him from kissing the carpet.

"Are you all right?"

Arthur regained his poise faster than he comprehended what had happened, still confused though he was on his feet and standing up straight by the door.

"Erm, yes, yes, of course." He brushed off his shoulders, adjusted his tie, and straightened his jacket. Beside him, Matthew stood with wide eyes behind his smudged glasses; on the other side of the cafe, Alfred snickered. "Thank you."

He waited for Matthew to respond, but the teenager stood at his elbow, as if expecting something himself.

"What do you want?"

"Oh, um, nothing. I just didn't know if you were leaving."

Arthur sighed. Idiots on every side. At least this one proved more courteous than the two imbeciles tripping each other as they mopped up the water all over the tile floor.

Still, he couldn't shake the atmosphere. Something about the dog-eared pages of the older, clearly used books and the warm glow of the soft lights awakened the deep romanticism he usually kept locked away, only brought out whenever he desperately needed to work.

Now, unfortunately, was one of those times. His inner starry-eyed child was tugging at the bars of his cage, ready to escape and run wild all over the pages.

And he needed it to run as free as it wanted to.

He sighed.

Stupid demanding editors. This was their fault.

"Is there any way," he said, turning back to Matthew, "that I can just sit by myself in that corner over there without either of those oafs coming to bother me? I don't need anything. I don't want anything. Just let me sit there and leave me alone."

Matthew looked up, seeming to consider this unusual request.

"Um, I guess that's okay."

Arthur didn't wait for him to decide otherwise or think further. He glared over his shoulder at Alfred and Francis before making a point of sitting as far away from them as possible while remaining in the back of the cafe.

Then, he took his laptop out again.

And began to type.

* * *

Despite his promise, half-hearted—and maybe reluctant—as it was, Matthew didn't keep the two owners (Arthur had settled on that conclusion as he waited for his laptop to come back to life for the second time, considering how they stayed late and spent their time alternating between setting up the cafe for the next morning and making faces at him) from disturbing Arthur's peace. As he typed his first sentence of the night, beginning chapter ten, Alfred slid up next to him, mop in hand, and asked, "Are you writing something? Oh, lemme guess. 'It was a dark and stormy night.' Because it is, y'know."

"Get out of here, arsehole."

By the time he had reached chapter thirteen, two hours after he'd arrived, Francis was asking if he maybe wanted an Old Man and the Tea.

"It might help you win a Nobel Peas Prize," said Alfred, who had already mopped the cafe floor three times and probably just wanted something to do.

"We. are. not. doing. this." Arthur slammed his laptop shut. "Go away. And Hemingway didn't win a Nobel Peace Prize, you idiot."

"Geez. Touchy, touchy. So defensive."

"Well—he is right, though."

Once again, the awkward teenager had come to his defense. Stumbling over himself as he did so, of course.

"What, him right about anything, Mattie?" Alfred laughed and threw an arm around Matthew's shoulders.

"But Hemingway didn't actually win a Nobel Peace Prize. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature."

"Oh, I know that. I was just testing you." Alfred grinned and struck a pose. "And I really wanted to make that pun."

Arthur facepalmed.

"Didn't he win it for _For Whom the Bells Toll_ or something? The book about the Spanish Civil War?" Matthew looked back and forth between Alfred and Arthur, apparently ignoring Francis, who was leaning over the edge of the booth and looking at Arthur's scrawl-covered notebook.

" _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ ," Arthur said, swatting Francis's hands away from his pen. "And he won it after he wrote _The Old Man and the Sea_. But you are right: he did write about the Spanish Civil War. Do you enjoy reading Hemingway?"

Matthew nodded and curled his fists again, squeezing them so tight his hands shook. Francis looked back at him and threw down Arthur's pen. Out of the corner of his eye, Arthur watched him stare at Matthew's fists as he moved to his side, his hands twitching a little as if ready to reach for the teenager. But he hesitated, and in that pause, Matthew shifted away from the three men.

Arthur recorded every tiny movement in his mind.

"I'm glad at least one of you has taste," he said, returning to the (more obvious) matter at hand. "And get away from me, you hairy freak."

Said hairy freak returned an hour later to tell him the cafe had closed hours ago and he really needed to go home, and, with Matthew asleep, glasses still on and face pressed into a book, Arthur only had one defense left.

He slammed down a crumpled $100 bill on the table.

Francis let him stay all night after that. At some point around page 250, Francis shook a startled (almost frightened, Arthur noted) Matthew awake and left the cafe with him, presumably to go home. When Alfred fell asleep at the bar in the middle of page 300, Arthur put in headphones to drown out the sound of his snoring. But finally, finally, when the sun rose just after seven in the morning, Arthur rubbed his eyes, packed up his computer, and headed home, ready to curl up in bed and get some sleep himself.

But only for a little while. Then, he had to email his agent.

Somehow, overnight, he'd produced a masterpiece.

With one hell of a backstory to accompany it.

* * *

Francis didn't sleep that night.

Matthew did. He'd made sure of that. An hour after he'd sent his son to bed, he'd sneaked into his room to check on him and found him tightly wrapped in his blankets, facing the wall and breathing in a comforting rhythm.

But Francis found no reassurance in Matthew's pleasant sleep. In fact, the calm made him wring his hands and shift in his chair at the table, where he sat with the worn copy of _Alice in Wonderland_ that Matthew had fallen asleep on earlier and prayed with all he had that the underlining and writing in the margins were not his son's.

He ran his fingers through his hair unconsciously upon realizing that the handwriting looked just like Matthew's.

Something—someone—was cannibalizing their peace.

If it had ever been more than a façade at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Hello! This is The Goliath Beetle :D As you must have gathered from Immortal x Snow's previous author's note, we're co-writing this fic. She wrote chapter one. I'm writing chapter two. And we're going to alternate.**

 **This fic is primarily supposed to be funny. Its main objective is to make you roll your eyes and think, "What were these two smoking? Wilde weed?!"**

 _ **However.**_

 **Warnings for mentions of domestic abuse.**

 **(Because, if you've ever read any of our stories, the both of us love sad feels.)**

 **On that happy note, enjoy this chapter :D**

 **(Also, ignore what that sweetheart Immortal x Snow said in the previous chapter. I can't write humour to save my life, or her life, or anyone's life, because I am a cold potato in the humour department.)**

 **And finally: I know that in canon, Ancient Greece is Greece's** _ **mother**_ **, but here she's his grandma.**

* * *

An Indeterminate, Specifically Vague But Definitely Considerable (Yet Not Very Long) Time Later

* * *

"Matthew... _mon coeur_ , wake up."

Matthew had very delicate arms. Francis loved it when he slept like this, completely still. His breathing was always slow, his brow creaseless. He wouldn't curl his fists or mumble or stutter. He wouldn't recede into the quietest corners of any room, hiding away from the world.

Asleep, Matthew was calm. He opened up a little, his shoulders loosening, his hair falling over his eyes. His sleeves would ride up sometimes, exposing those delicate arms of his.

It was always the left one that made Francis cringe, because there, the damage was obvious. Three circular scars—cigarette burns—from when the boy was twelve, still stood out too prominently. The first time he saw them, Francis couldn't bring himself to smoke for a whole month.

"Matthew?" He ran his hand through the teenager's hair. Francis did not, as a matter of course, make too much physical contact with the boy. Matthew was terribly jumpy about being touched in any way, and while he didn't outright flinch or shriek, he always visibly tensed. "You'll get late for school. I've made you pancakes. With maple syrup."

At the sound of those words, Matthew's eyes slowly fluttered open. He squinted at the opposite wall for a second before his languid gaze met Francis's eyes. "Good morning," he mumbled sleepily, not making a move to get up.

"Did you fall asleep reading again?" Francis knew Matthew always liked reading himself to sleep. This usually meant he would stay up well past midnight. It was a silly question to even ask, really, because sticking out from under Matthew's pillow was.

That. Book.

"Mmh, yes." Matthew rubbed his eyes and slowly sat up, yawning and stretching. "Am I going to be late for school?"

 _Yes._

Francis let out an airy laugh. "Well, I was actually thinking you could take the day off."

This caught Matthew's attention instantly. He narrowed his eyes in a single flash of suspicion before his gaze retreated to something softer, something more uncertain. "Why?" he asked, already a little tense. "Is something wrong?"

"No," Francis replied gently. "It's just...well, how much school does one really _need_ in a week? I mean, you went yesterday."

"Yesterday was Monday. Today's Tuesday."

"Now you sound like that irritating Rebecca Black song."

Matthew cracked a small grin. "Sorry."

Though Francis was smiling, there was a silent scream of frustration forcing its way between his teeth. He wanted to keep an eye on Matthew, wanted to make sure everything was _all right_ with him.

( _One day_ , Francis had promised himself, _one day, Matthew will trust me._ )

( _One day_ , Francis had promised himself, _one day, Matthew will call me 'Papa'._ )

* * *

Mostly, they were locals. The three Awesome Oldies, as Alfred mentally referred to them, Antonio—who would pop in for a quick Franz Coffee during his lunch hour—Berwald and his friend Tino, who went to Matthew's high school and sat in a quiet booth to do their homework—and Elizabeta, who would often pick up several of their famous bread rolls to take back home. (Apparently, her husband Roderich loved them, but felt it beneath him to visit a cafe that called its bread rolls _William Butter Yeast_.)

Occasionally, there'd be the travel-worn tourist looking for a place to pee. Alfred knew how to spot them instantly. They always had this look of wonder and exhaustion about them. Their clothes would be a little wrinkled, their faces a little dusty, and Alfred could sometimes spot an accent, too. They'd sit nervously at their tables and peer into the menus for a long time, emitting soft chuckles as they read the names.

Nineteen-Eighty FOOD was not a terribly famous place, but Alfred liked that. It was popular enough to break even and turn a healthy profit. They had a good reputation on Yelp too. But it still managed to keep its quiet, friendly air. He knew every single one of his customers, and every single one of his customers knew him.

They were all a family here.

"Mattie, watcha reading?" Alfred peered over Matthew's shoulder. He knew it annoyed the other boy to no end, which was kind of the point.

Matthew lowered his book and raised an eyebrow, the two actions performed in such perfect synchronicity that it seemed almost scripted. " _Animal Farm_ ," Matthew replied easily.

"Heeeeey, our meat platter is called _Animal Farm_!"

Alfred had initially even suggested that they have little toothpick flags sticking out of the meat, showing their names. The there would be three fat pieces of pork—called Napoleon, Snowball and Squealer. The leg of lamb would be called Muriel. The cows in _Animal Farm_ didn't have names, but Alfred wanted to call the beef Benjamin, and the chicken breast would be called Boxer—because, why not?

It was a brilliant idea.

Which Francis turned down instantly.

"We are _not_ naming pieces of meat after characters in a political allegory!"

"It's perfect, when you think about it," Matthew had meekly supplied. "We're all just pieces of meat in the eyes of the power-hungry."

"Yeah, see! Mattie agrees! People will find it funny!"

"No."

"Okay, forget it. Can I name the meat after Disney movies instead? At least those are easier to swallow. Pun intended, of course!" Alfred had laughed heartily to himself, holding his sides and wiping tears from his eyes. "We can call the pork Pumba, Piglet and Hamm. The lamb can be Djali—"

"Alfred, go wash the dishes."

Anyway, bottom line was, Alfred didn't get to name the meat. A shame, really. He had so many ideas.

"Is that pure maple syrup?" Alfred said suddenly, really _looking_ at the stuff Matthew was sipping. He was drinking it from an actual whiskey glass, smacking his lips, his pink tongue poking out from between his teeth occasionally.

When Matthew did nothing but grin sneakily, Alfred smirked. "Dude. Niiiice. But really, I can out-drink you."

"No, you can't." And Matthew turned his eyes back to his novel. Alfred reached forward and snatched the book away from him, ignoring Matthew's cry of surprise.

"Anything you can do, I can do better," Alfred sing-songed. "Including drinking pure maple syrup straight from a glass."

"Is that a challenge?"

Alfred narrowed his eyes, his smirk deepening. "Why yes, yes it is. We'll do it like shots."

And that was how Francis found them half an hour later, clutching onto each other and giggling and hiccuping, with no less than seventeen shot glasses surrounding them and over three bottles of maple syrup lying empty on the table.

"We have _customers_ to serve!" Francis tried to sound angry, but his rueful head-shaking (and that long, tired sigh), just made him seem exasperated.

"Dudethere'slike... _nobody_ here...hehehehe…" Alfred's rambles suddenly stopped and his eyes filled with tears. "Mattie I love you you're the cutest friend I could ever have I love sugar so much maple yaaaay!"

"Maple," Matthew agreed with a large, pacified smile. "Maple cakes. Honey. Winnie the Pooh." He paused and with trembling hands, picked up an empty shot glass to examine the single trickle of syrup running down its side. "Diabetes."

"So who won the bet?" Alfred piped up.

"I did."

"Really?"

"Really, Alfred."

"Bro."

"Yes?"

"Hardcore, bro."

* * *

The next afternoon began with a resounding _crash._ Alfred had been serving Grandpa Vargas his usual Edgar Allan Pie (they had _two_ Poe-themed desserts, because Poe's name was poerfect) when he heard it. Francis was in the kitchen with the door shut, so Alfred's eyes went instantly to Mattie, who stood in the middle of the dining area with the shards of a plate at his feet.

"Whoops, excuse me!" Alfred jumped to his feet, "You okay, Mattie?"

Matthew was standing rigid, eyes trained downwards at the broken plate. And then slowly, his fingers started to curl up. Alfred noticed this instantly. He wasn't sure what was going on inside Matthew's head when he did that, but it happened at least a few times a week, and he always seemed more rattled afterwards.

Then, with a smile so forced it made clowns look friendly, Matthew looked about the dining room and said, "Sorry, everyone! Please, go back to your meals!"

The regulars all knew Matthew, of course. People stared in surprise, but Matthew's shining reputation protected him from any negative attention. It didn't take much for things to go back to normal in the cafe.

Except that Matthew was slowly, slowly, curling into himself.

Alfred almost didn't notice it.

 _Almost._

Because it looked as though Matthew were kneeling to clean up his mess. It was only when he noticed his friend _trembling_ that he thought, _well, fuck._

He glanced only momentarily towards Grandpa Vargas. "Excuse me just a moment, okay?"

"Takphh youh thime," the elderly man replied with his mouth full of pie.

Alfred darted towards the other boy, quickly said, "Wait, let me get a broom, you'll—"

Too late.

Matthew let out a hiss and a soft cry, pulling back his hand as his finger plumed red.

"Crap, you okay?" Alfred got to Mattie just as things started to go to hell.

Something... _happened_...when Matthew saw the blood.

It seemed to break him.

Because all at once, his eyes filled and his breaths came in short, rapid gasps and in an instant, he started spewing out half-formed thoughts and it was all _terrifying_ —

"Oh my gosh Alfred I'm so sorry oh my gosh I didn't mean to—I—please don't—sorry— _no_!" and he was inching away from Alfred, shaking and crying, wiping his bleeding finger on his shirt, drowning in his own panic.

"Mattie." Alfred's eyes darted about the room. People were staring. He was making a _scene_ , oh hell.

Getting Matthew in the kitchen was easy enough. He was light in Alfred's arms, easy to steady. Matthew was protesting verbally, but his words were soft, and sounded more like terrified whimpers. Alfred wasn't even sure what he was saying anymore, except, " _Sorry, sorry, sorry_ ," over and over again.

Alfred was not used to such sudden changes in behavior. He hadn't been expecting an almost 180-turn around in Matthew. So the second they got through the kitchen doors, the second Francis turned and saw them, Matthew's trembling went completely still. And then he forcefully wrenched himself out of Alfred's grasp, stumbled just slightly before reaching out and touching a wall for support. And then he forced another smile, but this one wasn't terrifying or too fake. It was simply weak. It looked just about ready to slip off his features. Hell, the tears were still leaking out of his eyes, one drop at a time.

"Matthew?" Francis cried, swooping in on him. " _Mon cher_ , what's wrong? What happened?" He shot Alfred a look. _What did you DO?_

If it had been any other situation, Alfred would have found Francis's protectiveness hilarious. Francis had really only been protective about his designer shoes, his one prized possession, harping on about _tongues_ and _welts_ in a manner that made Alfred wonder if Francis was only talking about his shoes.

So to see that protectiveness magnified like this should have been hilarious.

Except it wasn't. It could never be.

 _I didn't do ANYTHING. He's YOUR son. Fix him!_

"I'm fine," Matthew said automatically. He took a step away from Francis. "Really. I'm fine. I just scraped my finger accidentally." He glanced down at the bloody mess his hand had become. "It's not as bad as it looks. I'm going to go clean this."

"Mat—" Francis started, but like a wisp, Matthew had already disappeared out of the kitchen and to the bathroom to sort himself out.

Alfred watched Francis's eyes follow him before the older man's expression just fell. It almost looked like he was going to cry himself. Instead, Francis just bit his bottom lip, hard, before turning his back on Alfred and going back to the stove.

Alfred swallowed. "Mattie accidentally broke a plate."

Francis froze in the middle of stirring cake batter. "Oh."

Alfred shifted his weight from one foot to another. "I'll...I'll go clean it up."

Francis nodded without turning around. "Please."

* * *

Alfred could not sleep. After everything that happened today, how could he? He could still recall every detail of Matthew's pale skin, his wide, terrified eyes, and his soft _sorry, sorry, sorry_.

He was trying to forget.

And nothing was better for forgetting than late-night crap TV and cheap beers.

Alfred was channel-surfing, zoning out, tasting the acid of the alcohol on his tongue when a too-familiar voice caught his attention. He almost missed it, but that catch of the sharp, shapely English accent made him lower the remote and stare.

That guy...looked familiar. Unkempt blonde hair, plain suit and—if two furry caterpillars rolled around in glue, dropped themselves in dog hair, and then got drunk on the unswept floor of a salon, they'd still be less fat and furry than that guy's eyebrows.

Alfred would recognise those eyebrows _anywhere._

"Dude," he said to himself, leaning forward and staring into the TV screen.

" _And now, an exclusive interview with award-winning novelist, Arthur Kirkland. Mr. Kirkland has just released his new book,_ Confessions of a Man Caught in a Comma, _a fascinating treatise on the inevitable nature of the human condition._ " The interviewer, a pretty brunette, laughed flirtatiously at this Arthur Kirkland. _"We're happy to have you here this morning, Arthur._ "

Morning, huh? So this must be a rerun. That made sense. Why would they screen an interview at two a.m.?

" _It's my pleasure, Sandra."_

" _So Arthur, this is your seventh consecutive best-seller, isn't it? That's quite impressive. Congratulations!"_

" _Thank you, Sandra."_

Geez, Arthur had no camera presence at all, did he? Alfred sat back against his couch, watching in absolute fascination. Arthur was watching the interviewer with poorly-disguised smugness. Like, _hey, look at me, I'm a pseudo-intellectual jackass who reads Joyce for fun._

Presently, Sandra said, " _I think we're all keen to hear about your interest human fallibility, as your books tend to center around that theme."_

Arthur cleared his throat, placing one hand over the other in an effort to look intelligent ('effort' being the operative word). _"Well, it's a subject that's tickled the fancy of many a writer, of course. My interest is really in studying the various aspects of it. Another book of mine—_ The Phenomenological Pirates— _is an example of the recklessness of human ambition. It's also a philosophical analysis, trying to understand a simple question: why are we?—in all its different forms."_

"Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?" Alfred said aloud to the TV screen. "And _Phenomeno_ whatical Pirates?"

" _I see_ , _"_ said Sandra, although she clearly did not. She smiled in a very pacifying, 'I'm trying to be patient with you' way. _"And your latest book is about an inner sense of human self-worth and the loss of one's direction, is that correct?"_

" _Well, I think that's being a little textbook about it. If you wanted to sum it up in one sentence—which I doubt you could—that's what you'd say, but of course, there's so much more to it. It's really a deeper questioning of what focuses us, what gives us a purpose to breathe, think, act._ "

Arthur sounded boring.

" _Right._ " Sandra smiled at him again, saccharine as ever. _"And is it true you finished the final draft of your book in a literary cafe?"_

Wait. What.

" _Yes_ ," Arthur said a little stiffly. _"The Nineteen-Eighty FOOD in Sacramento."_

Sandra laughed. _"Yes, I've heard rumour about that place from some other writers. People you know. Apparently they've made puns about writers. Like… what was it?"_

" _Franz Coffee,"_ Arthur supplied, now looking decidedly green. _"Like Franz Kafka."_

Sandra laughed again. _"How creative!"_

Arthur's lips became a thin line. " _Indeed._ "

And Alfred watched all of this in absolute astonishment. Then he bolted for the telephone and hastily punched in a number.

* * *

By now, Francis had become a little tired of Alfred's late night, hysteria-infused phone calls.

"FRANCIS. FRANCIS. FRANCIS."

" _MON DIEU_ ,WHAT DO YOU WANT? DO YOU KNOW HOW LATE IT IS?"

"TURN ON THE TV."

"No!"

"TURN ON THE TV." Alfred then hastily shouted the name of a TV channel. "DO IT. NOW. OHMYGOSH DO IT."

"Is everything okay?" Matthew's sleepy voice drifted into the room, and Francis had to lower the receiver (and then his voice) to respond.

"Alfred just called me in a mania."

"Oh." Matthew rubbed his eyes. He seemed to contemplate the severity of this for a moment, eyes scrunching up as he noticed Alfred's voice shouting even through the receiver, filling the room with a sort of soft, tinny yelling. Deciding that Alfred did this too often and it wasn't worth losing any sleep over, he turned around and ambled back to his room, saying, "I'm going back to bed."

"Sleep well!" Francis called after him before pressing the bridge of his nose and putting the phone back to his ear. "Alfred," he said in his most long-suffering tone, " _Why_ do you need me to turn on the TV at two in the morning?"

"Because you need to watch this interview. Dude, hurry up, you're going to miss it!"

"Whose interview is it?" Francis asked, curious despite himself.

"You know that customer who came in that one time? In the rain? He looked like a smelly cat?"

"Who?" Francis wondered, his gaze drifting to the ceiling. "Heracles Karpusi?" he asked finally, because he always smelled of cats. "Why would Heracles be on TV?"

" _Not_ him! The one who kept shouting about our puns! He left a hundred dollar bill and wrote something all night? Dude, apparently, that guy is a famous writer. Arthur Kirkland or something! And _GUESS WHAT_? YOU'LL NEVER GUESS!"

"WHAT?" Francis shouted back.

"HE FINISHED THE DRAFT OF HIS BOOK IN OUR CAFE. THAT NIGHT. AND HE MENTIONED THIS. ON TV."

"Are you seri—"

"DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?"

"Alfred—"

"WE'RE FAMOUS, BRO. FAMOUS! WE'RE GOING TO HAVE SO MANY CUSTOMERS! WE'LL BE _RICH!_ "

"Somehow, I doubt that," Francis said drily.

"AND HERE I THOUGHT HE WAS A BUM."

"What sort of bum would have a MacBook Pro?"

"A tech-savvy bum, Francis," Alfred said as though Francis had asked him something stupid like, _does my hair look okay?_ (Of course it did. Francis's hair was right up there with that of Michelangelo's _David_.)

"BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT!" Alfred shouted. "THE POINT IS, THIS TIME TOMORROW, WE'RE GOING TO BE THE MOST POPULAR CAFE IN AMERICA!"

* * *

The problem was, Alfred was absolutely right.

* * *

 _One Week Later_

* * *

"...Grandpa Vargas...tell my family...that I love them...Tell them I'm sorry...tell them...tell them—"

"ALFRED! WE NEED TWO AGATHA CRISPIES, A FRANZ COFFEE AND AN OLD MAN AND THE TEA AT TABLE TWELVE!"

Alfred was _not_ being dramatic when he said, "I think I'm going to faint." He was already seeing spots as he jumped at the ferocity in Francis's voice and turned violently. He hadn't eaten today. He'd barely finished his coffee. For a whole week, he'd been dashing around like a mad headless chicken, serving people enough food to satisfy an entire _army_ of Ronald Weasleys. Francis was going downright mental just _cooking_ for everyone. (Alfred highly suspected that the fumes from the kitchen were making him a little high.) Matthew could only help out when he wasn't at school, and even then, he was falling behind in all his classes because he didn't have time to finish his homework.

(Some would call this child labour. Alfred didn't dare remind Francis of that. He didn't want to be beaten to death with a spatula.)

And their beloved, homely, tiny, sweet little cafe was _overrun._

Apart from their regulars and the tourists, now they had all sorts of freaks sitting around, including businessmen, artists, annoying families, and the worst: _hipsters._

"Snot-faced vintage-clothed Beat poetry-reading potheads," Alfred muttered under his breath as he walked away from table seven, where an annoying hipster couple had asked for two Allen Gins-bergs— _basically gin and tonic water—_ in the middle of the day. "I want to _howl_ ," he added as he made the drinks. Then, "Who the hell am I talking to?" Then, "Nobody would even understand that pun." Then, "Maybe Mattie would appreciate it." Then, "Again, who the hell am I _talking_ to?"

Over the course of the week, Alfred had nearly tripped over six different children, spilled almost twenty drinks, unintentionally insulted about three makeup-caked women (and one man), and asked a fat bald guy when the baby was due. (It was a total accident.) (Really.)

The cafe was loud these days. Disgustingly so. It wasn't fun loud: nobody could even _hear_ the rock ballads playing on the stereo. Only the sound of chaotic shrieking children could be heard, and if you managed to have a conversation over that din, it was always generously punctuated with doses of, "WHAT? I DIDN'T HEAR YOU!" reverberating through the room.

Alfred could easily hired another waiter or twenty. They certainly had the cash. The cafe was rolling in money, tips pouring in like manna from heaven. (If manna was a bunch of crumpled notes and chipped coins from the depths of a scratched wallet, handed over by someone wearing an ' _I don't give a fuck about you, lesser mortal_ ' expression.)

But they couldn't find anyone. Francis said they had to keep looking, it had only been two hours since they'd put up fliers, blah-blah-blah, but the only people who seemed interested were convicts or bored housewives or a terrifying combination of both.

"Grandma Karpusi, Grandma Hassan!" Alfred managed to call out as he (tried to) make his way through the crowd of people in the cafe. The two women had just entered, taking their seats at Grandpa Vargas's table. Grandma Helena Karpusi was Heracles's grandmother, and bore a resemblance. Her brown hair was quickly turning grey but her green eyes still maintained a very youthful light. Grandma Hatshepsut Hassan was darker with caramel eyes and black hair that somehow never lost its colour, though she was probably older than both her friends put together.

"What a lot of people there are here these days," Grandma Helena said, looking around in wonder.

"Yes," Alfred muttered as he handed them menu cards. "And all of them are so stupid."

"Well, as Aristotle famously said," she replied, her voice grand, " _The intelligence of a creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it_."

Alfred stared. "Are you sure Aristotle said that?"

"Phu-lease," Grandpa Vargas interjected, rolling his eyes, "That's from Terry Prachett. My grandson Lovino loves Terry Prachett, so I know."

"Buttface Lovino reads _Terry Prachett_?" Alfred cried. "Wait, no. Buttface Lovino _reads_?"

"Hey! I'm Greek!" Helena snapped. "I'd know what Aristotle said!"

"But you told me just the other day that Aristotle was Mace-Macedo—" Alfred just ran a hand through his hair. "Mace Windu."

"Macedonian," Hatshepsut said coolly, without looking at anyone. "And forgive Helena. She hasn't taken her pills."

"Pills for what?" asked Alfred.

"Insanity," both Romulus and Hatshepsut said in unision.

"It's _Alzheimer's_ , you uncouth _Romans_."

"Hey now!" Hatshepsut snapped, narrowing her eyes. "Please don't call me a _Roman._ "

Romulus leaned forward, smirking. "Now, now, let me show you just how _uncouth_ Romans can be."

"Ew." Alfred just took a step back, shaking his head, hands up in surrender. "Just _ew_ , Grandpa Vargas. I'm going to go. There." He pointed vaguely at someone in the distance. "And you three can call me when you're done flirting and being gross."

Then a hand shot out to hold Alfred's wrist, and the unnaturally strong Grandpa Vargas pulled him close to whisper in his ear. "Alfred," he said, nearly laughing, "You love puns, don't you?"

"Yeah, of course! Why?"

"How about this one: _Viagra Woolf_."

Alfred let out an unmanly shriek, a flustered, " _No_!" and scuttled off, shouting, "You're _so ewww and GROSS_!"

* * *

The week moved onto the next week, as weeks were wont to do. Alfred saw the people he considered his family slowly crumble before him. It started with Matthew, who in an uncharacteristic burst of frustration smashed a pastry with his fist.

"Dude," Alfred started, not sure what to say as Matthew's previously band-aid covered hand was now caked in...well, cake.

"They asked for a _Lady of the Cake_!" he insisted, eyes glinting furiously. Vanilla cream fell from his fingers and onto the floor. "So I gave them a _Lady of the Cake_! Now they're saying they asked for _Edgar Allan Poedding_! I'll give them an Edgar Allan _Pounding_ , Alfred! They've been passive-aggressive demons since they got here!"

And then, after saying that, Matthew looked at the remains of the cake on his hand, the mess on the plate, and the slowly falling crumbs. Then, as Alfred (and Ed Sheeran), predicted, he crumbled like said pastry.

"I'm _horrible_." He trembled, eyes filling. "I should have just listened to them more carefully. I'm sorry for losing my temper, Alfred. I'll pay you back for that _Lady of the Cake_ , I promise."

"No, no, you don't have to—"

But Matthew had already proceeded to slink off to the restrooms, where he would wash his hands, wipe his eyes, and then go to the kitchen to ask for Edgar Allan Poedding instead.

It was then Francis's turn, as he, to boost his self-esteem and keep him going, wore his prized possession to work. Anyone with eyes could have told him this was a bad idea. Francis probably _knew_ it was. Those leather shoes of his were very fine, very polished, not a scratch on them. Francis only wore them on special occasions, like birthdays or MasterChef finales. Never to work.

Because what happened was bound to happen, and at six in the evening, Alfred entered the kitchen to find Francis curled up into a little ball, howling.

"Francis! Francis, dude, are you all right?" Alfred looked up at Matthew, panicked, because Francis never broke down, ever, unless he was watching the last few minutes of Titanic. (He always turned on the waterworks just as Rose says, " _I'll never let go, I promise._ " Good luck trying to get Francis to calm down after that. Good freaking luck.)

"I saw it happen," Matthew said breathlessly, reaching out to pat Francis's shoulder, but just about stopping himself.

"Saw _what_ happen?"

Just then, the ball of human tears called Francis Bonnefoy let out a pathetic wail. "My _SHOES_. They just—and the eggs—and it's all—" before promptly bursting into a fresh round of broken sobs.

"He was beating eggs," Matthew started patiently, "And he placed the bowl on the counter. And while he was moving around to do something else, he knocked them over. And they fell on his shoes."

"Oh. Shit."

Francis let out a whimper.

"And that's not all," Matthew went on. "He basically freaked out when the eggs fell on his shoes, right? And then in the process, he knocked over the flour, milk and sugar and those fell too. On his shoes."

"So basically," Alfred summarised, "Francis made a cake out of leather Armanis?"

"It's _Louis Vuitton_ , you uncultured American," Francis wailed. "And _yes_! I made a cake out of leather Louis Vuitton!" He finally uncurled himself slightly and looked up at Alfred.

Al had never seen Francis so… un-Francis-like. His eyes were red-rimmed, cheeks wet, snot running down his nose, lips very pink… He was the absolute picture of agony.

His shoes were another matter. The brown leather was now wet, white and yellow, garnished with sugar crystals and dripping milk and egg. How was Francis still wearing them? They looked disgusting.

"I'll never be able to afford anything like these ever again," Francis moaned, curling up and crying again.

Matthew knelt down and petted Francis's shoulder gingerly. "There, there."

"Maybe you can make a bet with Gilbert. Loser buys the other a pair of new Louis Vuittons. Then you make sure you win." Alfred somehow felt that his comment wasn't helping matters much. At least, that's what he gathered from that withering look Matthew sent his way.

* * *

So it was after Matthew crumbled like a pastry after crumbling a pastry, and after Francis crumbled like a pastry after making a pastry of his designer shoes, that Alfred decided something had to be done.

And while he sat all alone, well after closing time, downing one cheap beer after another, that the thought struck him.

This was all Arthur Kirkland's fault. If stupid Kirkland hadn't come in that night and finished his stupid novel and mentioned their (wonderful) cafe in his stupid interview then Alfred and his friends (family) wouldn't be in this stupid mess with these stupid customers.

And Francis would still have his precious shoes.

This was all Kirkland's fault.

And Kirkland would have to pay.

Alfred reached for his smartphone before he knew what he even wanted to do, and opened the browser. He typed in:

 _Artuf Kirkdlan famous authr concatc details_

After which Google said:

 _Did you mean:_ _ **Arthur Kirkland**_ _famous_ _ **author contact**_ _details?_

To which Alfred said out loud, "Yes, obviously bro," except that it sounded like, "Yesovioushly bruh," before he took another large swig of beer. Then he pressed the polite spelling correction Google had so kindly provided, and opened the first link that popped up.

It was Arthur Stupidface Kirkland's official website.

There was a contact number for his publisher's office.

Alfred smirked as he stared at the digits, then proceeded to type them into his phone.

Nobody answered. (Nobody would; it was one-thirty in the morning.)

Alfred could have simply put the phone down. He should have. He could have walked away from doing something silly in his drunk fog. He should have.

But instead, he let the mechanical beep of the voicemail wash over him, and then left the nastiest message his alcohol-drenched brain could think of.

* * *

Alfred almost thought he was a Hangover movie (Part Four? Part Five? How many useless sequels does that series have, anyway?), because he couldn't remember a _thing._ He had one hell of a headache, and random phrases, like _sexually repressed porcupine_ and _haggis-eating cannibalistic sheep_ floating around in his mind. He had no idea where they'd come from or even what they meant, but for now, his head hurt too much to care.

He'd fallen asleep on his couch, still in his clothes from yesterday, with a ghastly taste in his mouth. Alfred moved with the slow lumbering of a sloth underwater, his primary thought process consisting of: _fuck sunlight_ and _I love you, coffee._ Several times he felt like throwing up, but the feeling passed and his stomach settled with some uneasy swirling.

How was he going to deal with work today? Maybe he could just call in sick.

Alfred stared blearily at his phone. The screen had a about a hundred cracks radiating all over, and no matter what he did, the damn thing _wouldn't switch on._ "What did I even end up _doing_ with it last night?" Alfred wondered, and for a moment, he had a vision of having thrown it across the room whilst screaming in an animalistic way.

 _Ugh_ , he'd had too many fucking beers.

Staggering to his ancient telephone and picking up the receiver, he dialed Francis automatically, quietly glad that he knew the number off by-heart.

"...Francis?"

"Alfred, you sound awful."

"So do you, Francis."

"You remember that one time I made you eat salad?"

"Yeah."

"You sound worse than you did back then."

"Yeah. You sound like shit too."

"I had to throw away my shoes. So I had a little cry."

"I'm sorry."

"Me too. What's up?"

"I want to call in sick."

"Sick?"

"Yeah. I, uh, have a fever."

"Sick?"

"That's what having a fever means, right?"

"YOU SELFISH LITTLE BRAT!"

Francis's sudden shriek tore through Alfred's mobile, rammed into his eardrum and reverberated in the inside of his skull with concussion-inducing force, making Alfred audibly groan.

"I _know_ you just drank yourself silly last night," Francis went on, "That's what you do. And you _never_ get sick. You're just hungover, and frankly, Alfred, I don't care. I have enough to deal with. Like those customers and Matt—those customers!" He said the last bit a little hastily.

"What's wrong with Matthew?" Alfred asked, pressing the back of his palm into his eye.

"Nothing," Francis snapped. "Get your butt to work or I'll make you eat salad again. For the rest of your life. No, you know what, I'll go to Burger King _and_ McDonalds with your picture, telling them that if you come in there asking for a hamburger, to not serve you."

"That's cruel. That's just below the belt."

"Yes," Francis growled. "See you at work."

When the line clicked, Alfred dropped his phone on the dining table and lowered his forehead to the placemat, groaning. He was going to need so much more coffee to get through today…

* * *

 _Ring_

"MOMMY I WANT EXTRA CHOCOLATE IN MY PIE!"

"ALESSA, YOU PIPE DOWN THIS INSTANT!"

 _Ring_

"Wait, so, 'Inferno' is the name of your chili?"

"Um, yes, it's homemade."

"I don't get the literary reference."

"Like...Dante's Inferno?"

"...Who?"

"The Divine Comedy…? By Dante?"

"Is that a movie?"

"I don't know, Marlene, sounds like some church stuff. Andrew—your name is Andrew, right?"

"Um, it's Matthew—"

"Right, Andy, we consider ourselves reasonably well-read here, but you might want to explain this 'Divine Comedy' business."

"Um...okay…"

 _Ring_

"And so I told that bitch—"

"Don't say bitch, you sexist pig!"

 _Ring_

"Corporations are ruining the planet!"

"Yeah, down with Apple. I prefer android phones anyway."

"No, you don't _get it_! Corporations are—"

 _Ring_

Alfred groaned loudly, not that anyone could hear his pitiful cries over the noise in the cafe. Rubbing his temples, he staggered his way down the length of the floor and put the phone to his ear. "Hey, sorry to keep you waiting. This is the Nineteen-Eighty FOOD and you're speaking to Alfred. How may I help you?"

"Hi there," said the oddly too-sugary voice on the other end. "I was just returning your wonderful call, which, by the way, made me buy fifteen new pairs of earplugs. And then I had to look up your little establishment on Yelp to get this number. But boy, I think it was worth it."

"Uh, what?" Alfred asked, turning his back to the cafe and pressing the receiver into his ear a little harder. "Who is this?"

"In your own words—" the speaker paused, as though looking something up, "Arthur Fucking Kirkland."

Those three little words hit Alfred like bullets in his brain. The night was coming back to him. The beer. His angst. The telephone. _That message._ It all came back to him in such force that he had to physically hold onto the bar counter, lest he fall down from the sheer shock of it. "Oh." Alfred mumbled, ears ringing. "Oh, shit."

"'Oh shit' is right. You threatened me within no less than half an inch of my life enough times that I could easily have you arrested this second."

"Dude. Omg. Dude. Listen." Alfred ran a shaky hand through his hair. He never, ever let his temper get the better of him. This wasn't his first time in the service business. He'd worked as a waiter and bartender in other restaurants for years now. "Listen. I'm sorry. I was drunk. And tired. And—and, look, honestly, there are so many PEOPLE here. All the time. I can't keep up."

"'Omg'?" Arthur scoffed, "Can't you even talk like a normal person, you blithering buffoon?"

Alfred was about to apologise again, on reflex. He knew he'd fucked up BADLY. He knew he'd have to say sorry at least five more times to make this okay. So what Arthur said caught him off guard. "Excuse me?"

"You heard what I said." An overdramatic, clipped huff sliced through the line. "I can't even take idiots like you seriously."

"That's rude." Alfred blinked, more surprised than anything. "You don't have to be so nasty. I mean, haven't you ever just had a little too many?"

"Don't talk to me about being rude or nasty when you're the one who threatened to, and I quote, 'burn your bushy eyebrows off your face and feed them to frogs.' I mean," Arthur said coolly, "That doesn't even make sense." He paused and then added, "You also called me, and once more I quote, 'sexually repressed porcupine' and 'haggis-eating cannibalistic sheep.' First of all, haggis is _Scottish_ and I'm _English_ , thank you very much. Secondly, what are you, twelve?"

Ah, so _that_ explained those random phrases floating around in Alfred's head.

Alfred was about to respond, hopefully with something passive-aggressive but intelligent, when he heard Francis shout from the kitchen, "ALFRED! MATTHEW SAYS YOU'VE BEEN IGNORING TABLE FOUR AND THEY WANT THEIR MACHIAVELLI MOJITOS! _MERDE_!"

Alfred was numb to the yelling. Instead, Francis's harassed state as he slunk back into the kitchen only reminded him of why he'd called Kirkland up last night anyway. Because the people he cared about were stressed and unhappy. And because it was Arthur Fucking Kirkland's fault.

Alfred narrowed his eyes. "You know," he says coldly into the phone, "This IS your fault. This is a family-run cafe and my family is running itself to the ground trying to keep it up. You reduced Francis to a crying mess and Mathew can't sit and read like he wants to, and it upsets him. Your fucking INTERVIEW ruined EVERYTHING. And don't tell me to hire more people because there are no decent candidates. So, Arthur Fucking Kirkland, FIX WHAT YOU DID."

"Fix it? FIX IT? I am not helping ANYONE who threatens to use my hair to wipe his pet alien's arse!"

Alfred said nothing for a second, because even for him, that threat was creative. He only wished he remembered making it.

"I'll sue you for libel!" Alfred shouted.

"Do you even know what libel _means_ , you stupid wanker? You can't sue me for libel!"

"I'll sue you into the next—fuck," and Alfred paused. For a bit.

"You can't do that," Arthur quips coldly. When Alfred didn't reply, he added, "What, is Satan on the other line or something?"

Arthur was right. Alfred wasn't entirely sure what libel even was. The word reminded him of catfood for some reason. Maybe because he'd came across the word in a Garfield comic once. But anyway, it sounded official and he vaguely knew it had something to do with offending other people, so he'd used it. Now, with Arthur's reaction, Alfred narrowed his eyes. "I'll sue you for threatening me."

" _Excuse me?_ YOU threatened _me_ —"

"Also," Alfred yelled, his voice getting louder and louder with each word, "I'll sue you for ruining my business. I'll sue you for putting undue stress on my family. I'll sue you for making Francis ruin his only pair of nice shoes because he can't afford good things! Those shoes mattered to him, even if they were ugly! I'll sue you into the next century and don't think I won't. So FIX THIS. NOW. I don't care HOW you do it. Make all these stupid customers GO AWAY.

"You wouldn't win any of those lawsuits. You wouldn't have a chance. I actually have people to testify on my behalf."

"Doesn't matter. The scandal would be enough. And trust me, Artie—I can call you Artie, right?—Francis is FRENCH. If anyone can spread word of a scandal, it's him. You don't want to be associated with burdening a sweet family, right? With ruining a business, do you?"

The next words come through like ice—cold, hard, only the surface of the response peering out from the dark sea beneath. "Fine. Alfie—I can call you that, yes?—I will make your little cafe so unpopular that starving Sudanese children wouldn't eat there."

"Do your worst." And Alfred slammed the receiver down, furious but somehow satisfied. Yes. He showed him.

* * *

Arthur Fucking Kirkland came through. (And Alfred would have laughed at his own sexual pun, at the circumstances been a little different.)

Because two days later, aside from creaking floorboards (yes, floorboards, because those were rustic and cool), little dust particles and abject horror, Nineteen-Eighty FOOD was completely, totally empty.

Alfred's heart settled only fractionally when Romulus, Helena and Hatshepsut entered, because of course those three would never abandon him.

But apart from that…

"Francis," Alfred said quietly, pulling the older man into a corner. "Francis, I messed up."

Francis looked from Alfred to the starkly empty cafe, his face darkening like the rumble of an earthquake. "I _knew_ this was your fault."

* * *

 **A/N: Sorry this took so long. My work ethic is all over the place right now. I have no excuse D:**

 **But we hope you liked it! Please leave a review, because it makes us very happy (like, that's the only reason you should leave a review. I'd like to say we'd give you a free Shakesbeer but we probably won't, because we've finished those. Just, it's nice to see a sweet comment, you know? That's it. Be nice to us. Spread love. Heal the world. Yay.)**

 **Bye! :D**


	3. Chapter 3a

_A/N: Hey, everyone, this is Immortal x Snow. First of all, I think I owe you all an explanation as to why my chapter took almost two months. To put it simply, I was very busy with work for a while. Humorously enough, I got a job in a quirky, understaffed diner much like NEF shortly after I began writing chapter one. It was meant to be a part-time job to save money over the summer, but it quickly became more than that, and I really had no time to write anything but a very important original fiction piece (because I'm trying to make it into the real world of publishing, too!). Fortunately, I left that job last week, and now I have some shard of sanity back… though it's a very tiny shard. ;)_

 _I also need to explain how the next few updates are going to work. When I got past 10,000 words and the biggest part of chapter three hadn't happened yet, I knew it would take me a while to get something posted for you all. GB and I talked about what to do. Since she's very busy right now and I have so much left to go_ — _and we don't want to leave anyone hanging for a while with no updates_ — _I will be writing all of chapter three. However, chapter three will be split into a few different updates so no one gets a 20k+ chapter sometime in September but instead a series of smaller chunks throughout August. I'll be titling the different parts like so: "Chapter 3a," "Chapter 3b," etc. This way, the odd-numbered chapters will still be mine, and the even ones will be for GB. Capisce?_

 _Thank you all for your patience. I hope you enjoy reading this chapter as much I enjoyed scrawling down bits and pieces of it at work. (Shh. Don't tell.)_

* * *

"Come on, Alfred." Matthew curled his arms around his knees and leaned back into his friend's couch. "He's not actually that mad."

Alfred took such a large bite of his hamburger, pulled from his stockpile in the freezer, that he almost gulped down the whole thing in one bite. A blob of ketchup remained around his mouth.

"Matt, he about threw his second-best—well, now first-best—pair of shoes at me. I think he's pretty pissed."

He sighed and took the second and final (and tiny) bite of his quarter pounder. Stress-eating as usual, Matthew thought. His older brother of sorts had a knack for bad coping strategies involving food. And alcohol, of course, but after the story of the drunken phone call to "Arthur-Fucking-Kirkland" had come out, well, he didn't dare bring up beer within Alfred's earshot again, or Francis's for that matter. After a sequence of interviews slamming their cafe—hell, in every single interview the man had done in the past two weeks, he'd more than kvetched and outright seethed about everything from their food to their hairstyles (Francis had worn a ponytail for the past week in defiance of that ungracious, ugly, uncultured bastard)—the author'd managed to guarantee that no one except the Awesome Oldies would return, along with maybe Elizabeta if her husband really needed those rolls, and that was a big if.

"He'll get over it." Matthew traced a pattern of stains on Alfred's couch. Likely from spilling coffee. Matthew was pretty certain by this point in their friendship that caffeine was the only way the man got anything done. Who needed spunk or determination or discipline when you had liquid energy within reach? "He did send me over here, after all."

"Like that means anything." Alfred scarfed the last of his second hamburger and dusted the crumbs off his hands, still not noticing the red stain threatening to dribble down his chin and onto Matthew's math book. He edged his old problem sets a little closer to his half of the coffee table. "What am I supposed to be helping you with again?"

"Calculus. I have a big test tomorrow. Over integrals and stuff."

"Francis sent you over here to have me help you with calculus." Alfred paused a second before cracking up and smacking the back of his couch just by Matthew's head. "He's clearly gone crazy."

"Come on, Alfred."

Alfred picked up his plate and, heading into the small kitchen just off the living room, set it on the counter beside a stack of dirty dishes. Matthew's morbid curiosity almost got the better of him in goading him to ask how long it had been since Alfred had cleaned his apartment, but he curtailed it just in time. He really didn't want to know how dirty the place was, after all. His friend wasn't a slob, per se—in fact, he was probably far cleaner than most single young men—but Matthew had an almost obsessive need for loaded, whirling dishwashers and sparkling countertops. He needed cleanliness for security.

He didn't like to dwell on that fact much, but he couldn't exactly help himself.

"What made him think this was a good idea?"

"I don't know. He said you knew more math than he did. And that you took a ton of calc in college."

"I didn't take a ton. I took enough." Alfred sat back down beside Matthew and picked up the textbook. "I mean, I guess I remember some of this stuff. But who needs math, anyway?"

"I do. If I want to graduate."

"Who needs gradua—"

"Al." Matthew crossed his arms and gave his friend the deadliest glare he could manage, which only made Alfred laugh.

"Okay, okay, I get it. Shut up, Al. Fine, lemme look at this."

Alfred spent the next few moments poring over the book. Matthew pulled his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. Whereas Francis's apartment was as sweltering as the inside of a boiling kettle, Alfred's nigh full blast A/C made him shiver even in his hoodie. Al, on the other hand, hardly seemed chilly as he thumbed through Matthew's notebook, snickering at a doodle here and frowning at some scrawled numbers there. Even in his short sleeves and frayed cargo shorts, Alfred lacked so much as a goosebump.

It was during moments like these that Matthew found himself wondering once more whether his friend—more like his brother, really—was oblivious or stupid or maybe much smarter than he seemed, especially as he wrote up a series of practice integrals for him to work through while he popped over to the kitchen to brew some more—what else?—coffee. Alfred wasn't dumb, he thought as he tapped the metal end of his pencil against his lips and tried to think through each special method Mr. Van Hoffman had shown them in class long ago. If anything, the young man was just ignorant. Unaware. Unlikely to notice that he'd just poured half his coffee grounds on the floor or that his socks didn't match or that he still had ketchup on his face like lipstick gone awry (he'd even smeared it once or twice by now).

But just as Matthew knew the integrals he'd begun adding up could combine to form one long expression, so too did he know that a few (okay, many) instances of absentmindedness did not add up to an inane Alfred.

He wasn't dumb. Call him airheaded, obtuse, ditzy; add them all up, but don't box "moron" as the final answer.

Because somewhere, maybe deep down and only brought to light when needed or demanded, Alfred had a secret stash of smarts.

"Is it _3ln|x-3|_ minus _ln|x+2|_? Oh, and with the plus C?," said Matthew, handing Al his paper to check his work after hurriedly penciling in the oh-so-crucial "+C" (how could he have forgotten it?). The older boy frowned after a moment.

"Mm, nope, don't think so, Matt."

"Wait, what? I know I did this right." Matt gripped his pencil. "It's the partial fractions trick, right? Where you split it up? I can't think of another way to do it."

"Right trick, bad foiling. Check your multiplication around step three."

A moment later, Matthew facepalmed.

"Wow. I'm a total idiot. _3x_ times _3x_ does not make _6x_ squared, Matt."

Alfred chuckled and mussed up Matthew's wavy hair. He shoved his hands away in response but couldn't help but crack a small smile. He didn't like having his hair touched. He didn't like anyone getting close to his face. But he almost didn't mind Alfred pulling out his ponytail or poking his cheek or throwing a heavy arm over his thin shoulders.

"That's better," Alfred said, giving Matthew a thumbs-up after checking over his revised work. "Only what, twenty more to go?"

Matthew groaned.

"It's midnight, Al. I get up at six-thirty. I haven't even started my French homework."

"That's easy. Just make Francis do it for you. Problem solved. What else can I fix for you?"

"That's called cheating, o brilliant one."

"Actually, it's called using your resources. Who needs school, anyway?"

"I do."

"Says who?"

"The law."

"Ah, that pesky little thing. Wouldn't it be nice if it just went away for a while?"

"You'd be dead in three seconds."

"Would not."

"Would too."

"Would not." As if to prove his point, Alfred snatched up Matthew's textbook. "Now whaddaya gonna do?"

"Hey, give that back."

Matthew was tall, but Alfred was taller and knew how to use those crucial three inches to his advantage. He held the book over his head and grinned at Matthew.

"C'mon, Al." He jumped and stretched his arms as high over his head as they would go, but he only managed to graze the slick edge of the book. "I'm going to fail that test tomorrow and Francis will kill me."

Alfred laughed, not seeing Matthew's wide eyes or hearing the waver in his voice.

"Dude, you'll be fine. Francis couldn't kill anything if he tried."

"Al—"

"Well, maybe he could kill fun. Or me. But not you."

"Al, please. Please give it back."

"Oh, all right." Alfred sat down and set his prize in Matthew's arms, ignoring the icy glare he'd gotten. "But seriously, you're gonna be fine."

"You don't know that." Matthew wanted to clutch the book tight, as if it could slow down his heartbeat a bit, but thought better of the situation and set it down on the coffee table next to his old assignments—which Alfred snatched up before he could protest.

"Matt, you got A's on, like, all of these. I mean, aside from the two here you turned in late, but whatever. You're a smart kid. Hell, you could tutor me in math. Maybe I'll have to go back to school someday and get you to do that."

"Go back? Like for grad school?"

Alfred took a long drink of his coffee. Matthew prayed he'd made decaf for once. He did have to admit that as little as he appreciated his friend's caffeine highs, he did like the earthy, full (if bitter and burned) smell of his coffee. It made him feel warm. Safe. Close.

And real. As if he hadn't fallen into a hazy, vague dream, but really had Al there with him. Really had someone to call his brother, his family, after all.

"Nope, that's not what I meant. I never finished college, Matt." He cleared his throat, seemingly trying to buy time. "I dropped out my junior year. Second semester."

Matthew paused, his mind lagging like an old computer in an attempt to process the information. The coffee was definitely closer to bitter than to rich now, and the apartment colder than ever, practically gnawing at his pulsing fingertips.

"Al—I don't get it. Why?"

"Wasn't for me, that's all." He stretched his arms above his head, his shirt inching up with them above his belly button, and yawned with his mouth wide open. "Just wasn't for me. I wasn't smart enough, and some pretty paper couldn't really fix that. Plus, it couldn't give me what I wanted. I thought my parents would freak, but they didn't mind. Didn't tell me to come home, either, but that was fine because I liked Sacramento well enough to stay."

"I—I thought you'd always lived here," said Matthew, deciding that out of all the questions blurring and whirling together in his mind, as if spun by a hiccupping, broken blender, he might as well ask a somewhat innocuous, sensible one.

"Hm? No, dude, I'm from near D.C."

"Oh." Matthew blinked. He wished he could have thought of something more intelligent, but only the obvious ran through his mind.

Alfred went to college. Alfred didn't finish college. Alfred didn't find what he wanted at college.

Did Francis know this?

"Sorry. It's not like I didn't want to tell you or anything," said Alfred, an apologetic half-smile forming on his face. He wiped his mouth after a last swig of his coffee, looking at the red stain on his hand with confusion so clear and so childish that Matthew almost laughed.

But deep down, that was all Alfred was: a big kid. A big child with a heart and sense of humor every bit as big as he was.

And, with a deep breath, Matthew understood that his childishness was the very thing he liked about his friend. The exact thing he envied the most in him. Because he wanted to be a child, too. A real child. Not the kid who looked young but had a heart twice his age and a soul so old it could shatter at the slightest touch. Not the one who had to be his brother and his father and even his mother all at the same time.

If he had been even an ounce braver, he would have reached out and given Al a hug that moment and told him everything. But the really lovely thing about growing up was that he'd gotten all the vices of adulthood without the virtues that should have balanced them out.

He was a coward.

"You okay, Matt?"

Matthew wanted to shake his head and tell the truth. Instead, he settled for the usual lie. Alfred wouldn't understand him. He had parents who loved him, who accepted his decision to leave college and live his life the way he wanted.

"I'm fine. Just still worried about the test." That much was true, he thought, reassuring himself with a mental pat on the back. "It's a big portion of my grade."

"You know what?" Alfred jumped off the couch and pumped a fist in the air. Matthew could have sworn he saw supernovae in his sparkling eyes—baby blues to match his baby face. "I'm making you pancakes, bro."

"Huh?"

"No, seriously, I got the kind of maple syrup you like and everything. I decided it wasn't that bad after seventeen or so shots. However many it was." Alfred grinned. "I got pancake mix and everything. Good old Bisquick."

Disgusted out of his silence, Matthew rolled his eyes.

"If you're going to make pancakes, at least make them from scratch. Don't use that pre-made stuff."

"Whoops, look like using Wolfram to create those integrals put too much strain on my wi-fi. Darn, how inconvenient. Now I can't look up a recipe."

"Alfreeeeeed."

But Alfred sauntered off to the kitchen and proudly took out a brand-new box of Bisquick pancake mix. Matthew wondered how much work putting Vaseline on all his doorknobs without him noticing would be. He'd totally do it if not for the test breathing down his neck.

Even so. He'd save that prank for a rainy day. Maybe, just maybe, it would cheer Alfred up.

Because Matthew could see straight through his pretend happiness into the worry that lurked within. The worry that Alfred buried even as he whisked together pancake mix with milk from his jam-packed fridge. The worry that he smoothed over with smiles and drowned out with guffaws. The worry that hurt him but could hardly compare to the insidious guilt that curled around his stomach and over his chest up to his chin, where it settled as a lump in his throat.

He'd hurt his little family by trying to protect them, hadn't he?

* * *

Francis couldn't remember having an actual fight with his son. Their home had tension sometimes, of course, but the friction never sparked an actual blaze. Not until Matthew discovered Alfred had never finished college.

The afternoon after his big calculus test, Matthew had been unusually quiet. Though the cafe had been so empty that every tiny noise—a page turning as Matthew read, the floorboards creaking as Alfred paced, metal clanking against metal as Francis whisked dough for pastries that no one would buy (except maybe Romulus, and only when Helena and Hatshepsut decided not to fight with him about his so-called "diet")—swelled and resounded against the shelf-covered walls. But Matthew made no sound at all from the moment he trudged in and sat down in his back booth to do his homework to the second he stepped outside, an ephemeral shadow from a flickering candle, following Francis home at the end of another long, uneventful day. Once more, no one had come in. Hardly anyone besides the resident apartment dwellers, Alfred's neighbors, even walked by, and when they hurried past, chattering on their phones or sipping Starbucks coffee or holding their lovers's hands, they never looked over their shoulders into the dark, empty cafe.

It wore Francis down a bit. He hadn't committed quite the money or energy or time to the place that Alfred had, true. It hadn't been his drunken mistake (to put it gently) that had strangled the whole dream. Still, despite its eccentricities (or maybe because of them; he couldn't decide), Nineteen-Eighty FOOD had become a refuge, a shelter, and maybe even a home. Especially for Matthew.

Francis would have done anything to make his son safe and at home and maybe even smiling in due time. Now Alfred had gone and destroyed his best shot at some hint of domestic peace. He'd have to search like a crazed man consumed in his quest for any other chink, any other opening in Matthew's heart.

"So—how'd your big calculus test go?" he asked that night over pungent, earthy coq au vin pulled bubbling from the oven. Cooking had always served as his source of stress relief—which, of course, had been yanked out of the picture when he needed it most. At least Matthew liked his cooking. So he thought, at least. Matthew didn't talk about food much.

"It was fine."

"Did Alfred help you study last night?"

Matthew wrinkled his nose, his steaming spoon halfway to his mouth.

"If you count burning pancakes and setting the stove on fire and then flooding his apartment as helping me study."

"I don't really want to know, do I?"

"Probably not."

Francis took a sip of his ice water from his sweaty glass. The air conditioning had broken down a while ago. He'd been saving up money to fix it, and he'd been at the landlord's door at least twice a week to complain, but both tenant and owner had expected to have until at least summer to work on the problem. Early February in California wasn't supposed to be this warm and muggy.

So when Matthew began tugging at his shirt collar and playing with his long blue sleeves, Francis assumed the heat was making him uncomfortable. Only when his son began pushing his food around with his tarnished spoon and clearing his throat did Francis begin to suspect otherwise.

"Do you want to say something?" Francis ran a hand down his short ponytail. "I mean, is there something you want to tell me?"

When Matthew ducked his head, Francis's heart sank equally low. He must have missed his chance. He'd been awaiting some sort of confrontation with his son over just about anything, really. When he thought about it, he realized that they did have quite a few things to fight about, all of which stemmed from the same fetid, bleeding root: Francis had adopted a damaged child who may not have wanted salvation.

Matthew's head came back up in a few moments. He brushed his bangs out of his wide eyes and cleared his throat again. The rough, almost ragged noise made Francis wince.

"Well," Matthew finally managed, "Al told me something."

"Mhm?" Francis nodded and raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah." A pause so long Francis thought Matthew was refusing to elaborate. "He told me he didn't finish college."

"Matthew—"

"He dropped out his junior year."

Just like that, as though he'd said nothing at all, Matthew returned to his dinner.

Francis sat still and straight in his chair, weighing his possible responses. Everything seemed as though on a balance with Matthew. Every word, every moment, every damn gesture mattered. One small misstep or careless word, and the scale would tip in the very direction Francis was dying to avoid. Even the sigh that escaped his lips seemed to make Matthew withdraw further within the crumbling, slapdash fortress he'd hastily throw up whenever Francis crossed that invisible line that his son had drawn and that he could never move one way or another. Matthew's boundaries may have looked fragile and last-minute, but Francis knew from experience that time had made them impenetrable.

"Perhaps—perhaps we shouldn't discuss this tonight, Matthew."

The lack of a response on the other end of the small metal table and Matthew's clenched fists served as silent agreement.

The fire burned out into smoldering ashes, but Francis could still feel the heat threatening to explode again.

* * *

As an author, Arthur had long since hardened himself to criticism (those fools had no idea what they were talking about) and rejection (they just didn't see his brilliance yet) from his days before his first big publishing contract. He'd learned to ignore such common idiocy. But he hadn't yet learned how to humble himself to spend any more time than necessary near the western half of the IQ bell curve.

These people weren't idiots, he reminded himself as he opened the door to Nineteen-Eighty FOOD.

"Hey, look." Alfred leaned on his broom. "It's an annoying plot twit. Get it?"

Well, perhaps they were. Alfred at least had long since fallen off the peak of the curve.

Arthur probably could have killed him but for recognizing that he was not exactly in the best position to reinjure someone he'd more or less ruined already. Instead, he traced the edge of the menu that Matthew had pushed onto the edge of his table and wondered whom he should give the neatly wrapped parcel he kept at his side in his leather messenger bag. Probably not the creepy frog glaring at him from one of the empty corners of the cafe. Maybe Matthew, ever the awkward teenager, would take it, but he had disappeared, possibly beneath the floorboards or into the bookcase.

Arthur could sympathize. And perhaps he didn't like doing so, but that didn't mean he would get off the piercing hook of guilt that easily.

"So." Alfred meandered over to his table after chatting with the trio sitting at a small table near the window in chairs as old and creaky as the customers lounging in them. Alfred forced a grin; Arthur wanted even more to punch and strangle him, preferably at the same time. "Can I get you anything to eat? Something to drink?"

"Well." Arthur hadn't opened the menu yet, and he'd taken great pains to expunge all memories of those awful food puns from his mind. "Do—do you maybe serve fish and chips?"

Alfred opened his mouth, but the creepy man's voice answered.

"But of course," he said from the corner, arms folded and expression—well, Arthur didn't care much for that expression. "It's our specialty. I'll go prepare it just for you."

"Y'know, we need a pun for that," said Alfred, turning back to Arthur after watching the other man stomp off into the kitchen. "Fish and chips. You're a writer. Help me think of something."

"I would greatly prefer not to."

"Isn't that something from a Melville story? Bartleby the Screwdriver or something?"

"Scrivener. He was a scrivener, thank you very much, and go away."

Alfred shrugged, took his menu, and hurried back to the only other occupied table, which two young men had just joined. Alfred pulled over a chair and sat down next to the old man while practically shoving a book into one of the women's faces and blabbering about something. Arthur couldn't quite make out what, not because Alfred whispered but because he spoke so quickly, an ebullient spring of excitement and energy. Even Matthew, who had emerged in a booth across the cafe with a book and glass of water, looked over his shoulder and smiled as the woman made some remark that put Alfred in stitches, wiping tears from behind his glasses and doubling over with guffaws.

With their glasses and builds and blond hair, the two boys could have been brothers but for the enormous contrast in their personalities, Arthur thought. He wondered how the three of them had banded together to create something as offensive to good taste as this cafe. He hated this part of authorhood sometimes: getting all caught up in mundane, even strange stories that swirled together around him, weaving their webs to grab his thoughts for any length of time from the swiftest of moments to his entire life. As a person, he had developed a talent for snipping those thin threads before they could entangle him for long; as an author, he filtered them out and picked the worthy tales for his books. He wrote only the best. The critics had come to expect that from him.

The clatter of a plate against the tabletop rather rudely yanked Arthur from the party he'd been throwing himself in his mind. The frog stood beside him, looking both angry and pleased with himself, pointing to a mess of tuna clearly dumped from a can on top of crumbled potato chips likely poured from the bottom of an empty Lays bag. Both Matthew and Alfred and even the three old customers stared.

"You asked for fish and chips?"

"Francis, I don't think..." Alfred hurried over, hands held up and mouth twisted.

Arthur sat staring at the plate while Alfred tried to figure out whether the "chips" were supposed to be French fries or potato chips, stuttering something about how Francis should know because he was French and that had something to do with French fries and English food, right?

"No, Alfred, I'm pretty sure this is correct." Francis smiled. "Besides, Arthur likes it. Doesn't he?"

Alfred chuckled, his face going red. For someone who had the gall to call Arthur and dub him a sexually repressed porcupine and an alcoholic caterpillar, he had embarrassment scribbled all over his face. Arthur had half a mind to blow Alfred over and stab Francis with his fork.

He folded his napkin in his lap.

"You see, Alfred—"—Arthur picked up his fork and took a deep breath at what he was about to do—"—Francis is absolutely right."

Arthur took a mouthful of the sob-worthy bastardization of English cuisine.

"I do indeed like it."

Francis's grin widened.

Alfred's jaw dropped.

Matthew's book hit the floor, though that probably had more to do with the flung-opened front door and the man running over the threshold cackling and brandishing a gun.

At the intruder's proclamation that this was a stick-up and that he needed all the money in the joint that moment, Arthur jumped to his feet, ready to push past Francis and find a way to take down the intruder. Instead of stepping aside to let him through, Alfred shrugged and rolled his eyes and muttered something about more annoying plot twits before running behind the bar and taking out—Arthur's eyes widened; where had California been when civilization had finally started to reach the United States?—a gun of his own.

"Sure thing." He pointed his gun at the crouching man. "You'll just have to get through me first."

Arthur braced himself for explosive gunfire and the acrid burn of gunpowder in his nostrils. He even bent over a little, ready to run into the fray if needed. He didn't particularly feel like wasting the rest of his career and wisdom on a sudden death, but he didn't plan on running away, either. Arthur Kirkland considered himself a brave man.

Given how he shoved Arthur back down in the general direction of his seat and sat down on the tabletop with a grumble, Francis didn't exactly seem to agree with Arthur's flashy self-portrait. Why he hadn't jumped to protect Matthew, Arthur couldn't decide. He was just planning out his own route behind the bar past the door to the kitchen and toward the other half of the cafe when the intruder fired and hit Alfred square in the chest.

"Aw, c'mon man, that's completely unfair," he said, staring down at his soaked shirtfront.

"What, that I'm faster than you?" The man laughed. "That's kinda your own damn problem, Al."

He fired again, hitting Alfred's glasses this time, eliciting a groan and a, "That's it, I'm definitely gonna kill you for this, Gilbert."

Arthur's eyebrows knitted into a hairy mustache over his eyes in utter flabbergastation as Matthew picked up his book and continued reading, the old man cheered Alfred on, and arcs of water shot across the cafe and hit the floor with loud bullet-like pitter-patters.

"What in the bloody hell—"

"And that would be Gilbert Beilschmidt," said Francis, leaning back onto his hands and watching Alfred tackle the man and get thrown into a wall in retaliation. "He does this, oh, maybe about once a week. He tried to do it during rushes, but a taser and trip to jail put an end to that."

Gilbert pinned Alfred to the wall and emptied his water gun in his face.

"I win. Bow to the almighty awesome me."

"Get off me, asshole." Alfred wiped his glasses on his still-sopping shirt and, grumbling, put a hand to his side. "Or who knows, maybe Arthur Kirkland over there'll call the police on you again. And, y'know, personally make sure Antonio won't bail you out this time."

"You mean the Arthur Kirkland? The pretentious jackass who makes more than twice a year sneezing and puking up nonsense onto a piece of paper than I do slaving away at my vitally important job every day?"

"Gilbert, you sell used furniture on Craigslist."

"Yeah, but at least I don't do stupid things like ruin my own business while drunk."

"Sounds like they're talking about you," said Francis, swinging his legs, pushing himself off the table, and mirthlessly smirking at Arthur. "Better go see what mess you've made now."

Arthur watched with narrowed eyes as the three men continued chatting beside the bar. In the corner, Matthew finally managed to turn a page of his paperback. He was a bit of an odd kid.

Arthur set down his fork after his final bite of cold, tinny tuna and crisps—certainly not chips, as Alfred had insisted he call them—that were an offense to all things English. He picked up his parcel and started walking over to Matthew's table. He'd be the most likely to accept it. Out of all of them, he had to have the most taste.

He had just reached the boy's booth and was clearing his throat when Alfred began to whine in the most pathetic tone Arthur had ever had the sheer misfortune of hearing.

"Come on, Gilbert," he said, clinking a teaspoon against the ice in the glass he was mixing. "I know it's been a few months, but man, we were doing so good until, well—yeah."

"Until you screwed up and drunk-dialed Mr. Too-Good-For-Craigslist here?" Gilbert pointed to Arthur, making Matthew jerk his head up from his book.

While Alfred hemmed and hawed his way through an embarrassed explanation—"We had gotten so busy because of—well, because of him—that I just lost it for one moment. We were doing so well; you saw it, man"—Arthur cleared his throat again and waved to Matthew.

"Hello."

The teenager flinched just the tiniest bit, his movements so slight Arthur almost missed them.

"Hi." He swallowed. "Do you need something?"

"Not particularly, no." Arthur smiled. "I just wanted to see what you were reading. You seem quite sucked into it."

Matthew held up his book and sat up a bit straighter in his chair. "It's _Alice in Wonderland_."

"That's an excellent book." Without waiting for permission from Matthew, Arthur sat down across from him and set his parcel down on the table between them. "What do you like best about it?"

"Well, I don't really know. I guess I just like the craziness of it all. It has so many weird things going on all at once."

"Quite right." Arthur folded his hands on the table. Matthew relaxed a little and set his book down, one finger inside the dog-eared, worn pages to mark his place. "Do you read it often?"

"Every night before I go to sleep. But I've never finished it."

Arthur frowned and was about to ask why anyone would ever leave a book unfinished when Alfred's whine cut him off. No, it wasn't exactly a whine. That wasn't the right word, Arthur decided. More of a plea, pathetic as it struck him.

"You haven't given me enough time. Just a little longer. I can fix this, really."

"The same way you fixed the overcrowding problem?"

"Okay, that was low."

All the same, Alfred put down the drink he'd mixed for himself. Gilbert took a swig of his frothy gold beverage with a grin. Francis remained silent.

"What's he doing here, anyway?" Arthur asked Matthew, who didn't seem to share Arthur's interest in the conversation at the bar. "Besides pretending to rob the place. And doing a poor job of that, I might add."

"Gilbert? He and Alfred made a bet that wound up opening this café. I think they were both pretty drunk. As per usual."

"That wouldn't surprise me. What did they bet?"

"If Alfred runs this place successfully, Gilbert will call him his superior for life. And there's something about making out with Al's shoes, too." Matthew wrinkled his nose. "Now, if Al loses—"

"—Dude, it's not even like you get anything if I lose. Knock it off."

"—Well, they were so drunk when they made the bet that Gilbert forgot to make sure he got something if Alfred lost. Except self-satisfaction, I guess."

"Matthew," said Arthur, pursing his lips, "I'm sure you know this, but you have fallen in with some very odd people."

He shrugged, palms raised toward the ceiling, and said nothing.

Behind the bar, Alfred had lowered his voice and bent over, resting on his forearms, whispering something to Gilbert that Arthur couldn't hear. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't help worrying about that damn prick, much as that concern really rather sucked. Deep down, he knew that despite all the blame Alfred was clearly shouldering, he was responsible, too. Both for the cafe's wild success and its subsequent downfall.

Arthur took a long look at Matthew's copy of _Alice in Wonderland_ and then looked all around the room. Then, he remembered. When he had first come in that night, sopping and grumpy and needing nothing more than a place to write, he had thought right away of his favorite Hemingway story, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." Of course, the cafe hadn't been all that clean until Alfred had finished his haphazard job of mopping and sweeping, and even then it hadn't sparkled. But it had been well-lighted.

And, he thought as he looked at Matthew's pink face, it had been safe. With its creaky floorboards and mismatched books and smell of fruit and Windex, the cafe had sheltered all of them. And him, too. (Arthur didn't like including himself with the lunatics who ran the place. Refuge or not, it had its fair share of kooks, as one glance at the trio at the bar reminded him.) It sheltered him from the rain with its lights shining into the shadows of a foggy street and its quiet calm in the darkening twilight that late summer night. It seemed like another world entirely, separate from the rest of Sacramento. It stayed open, lit, in the midst of the changing and hastening night engulfing the rest of the city.

He too was one of those who liked to stay late at the cafe.

"I'll be right back, Matthew." Arthur rose and walked toward the bar without glancing back to gauge the boy's reaction. He figured he could trust him with his messenger bag and parcel.

Alfred gave him a funny look that morphed into a half-smile.

"I forgot you were still here," he said. "I'll give you your check in a sec. Hey, that rhymes."

"No need." Arthur took his wallet out of his pocket and slid a crisp $50 bill across the counter to Alfred. "No, shut up, don't say anything. You'll make it worse."

Gilbert guffawed.

"Dude, you could totally get this place up and running again just with donations from this sucker." He tipped his glass toward Arthur and stifled a sequence of giggles.

"Stop. We don't need any of Mr. Kirkland's charity." Francis let each word snap like a lash from his clenched teeth. "In fact, we really don't need any more of Mr. Kirkland himself."

"I don't think I'd like any more of you, either," said Arthur, pushing the bill back toward Alfred, who had set it back down with a confused stare. "But look, part of this really is my fault, too. And at least I have enough maturity to admit that."

"Look, no one's denying blame here—"

"Yes, Alfred is actually at fault."

"—Thanks for that, Francis. But I really think it's better if you go, Arthur." Alfred's face twisted into a sad half-smile. "We'll—I'll—figure this out on my own."

"Damn right you will." Gilbert scoffed. "Good luck getting yourself out of this one. How are you going to win Sacramento's Best New Restaurant without customers?"

"We'll figure it out, Gilbert. We still have time. I can go through the apartment complex advertising to my neighbors—"

"Wait." Arthur held up a hand and paused for a second to think. "Are you offering that as a last chance on the bet? If Alfred wins that, he wins the bet?"

"How did you figure that one out, Prickly Pants?"

"I liked this place better when we only had dead writers," said Francis with a sigh and eye roll.

"Look," said Arthur, hoping Gilbert's remark had nothing to do with Alfred's oh-so-brilliant porcupine quip. The idiot in question tapped his finger against the fifty and glanced over at Arthur, who felt the familiar knotting of his stomach. He wasn't sure how, but he had developed a talent for getting himself into these situations. Apparently, the two of them shared a gift for fucking up. That would probably explain why he had to care about that arsehole. "I probably can't draw crowds again, but I can do something at least. I'll work here. I'll help. I'll do advertising or whatever you need."

"No way." Francis crossed his arms. "Someone will call the health inspectors on your eyebrows."

Alfred tried and failed to smother his laughter.

"That'd make this more interesting. Al, that's officially part of the conditions. You have to hire Prickly Pants to help you win the award. Take it or leave it."

He finished off the rest of his drink and slammed the glass down on the counter, making Alfred wince.

"And, y'know, since this guy overpaid so much—surely you wouldn't mind just sticking my shandy on his tab, right?"

"Nice try." Alfred held out his hand. "It's only five bucks with a tip. You have to make at least that much off your dumpster finds."

"They're not dumpster finds. They're lost treasures."

Still, Gilbert slapped the five into Alfred's hand, picked up his jacket with a chortle and "Good luck, sucker," and left.

"Well," said Alfred, turning to Arthur and tucking both bills into his back pocket, "I guess you're hired. That's the only way we're going to win this thing. I'll see you at eight-thirty tomorrow morning."

Francis put his head in his hand. Matthew stared from the booth, still motionless, finger still in his book. Arthur walked back to him, pushing the parcel into his hands and picking up his bag.

"Keep that," he said with a smile and pat on the tabletop. "You're probably the only one worth giving it to."

As Arthur walked out of the cafe, gripping his bag and wondering what the hell he'd gotten himself into and why he had to be a responsible, mature, wise adult, he heard the old man at the back table call to Alfred, "That's it—we'll show that knucklehead Gilbert. Fight him like a Roman, Alfred. Crush him like I did Hannibal in the Punic Wars."

"Brother," said one of the young men, "doesn't it worry you that Grandpa thinks he fought in the Punic Wars?"

"No," the other said, "what worries me is that Alfred thinks Grandpa fought in the Punic Wars."


	4. Chapter 3b

_A/N: So. You may have noticed that this chapter is very long. I have no excuses and many regrets._

 _Allistor is Scotland (but he and Arthur are actually not related in this story), and Emil is Iceland._

* * *

Matthew didn't know what had possessed Arthur to give him a signed copy of his newest book, _Confessions of a Man Caught in a Comma_ , much less to include a note saying he was "so very sorry," for all the trouble he'd caused, but he appreciated the gift all the same. Even though he could tell five pages into the book that he wouldn't like it at all. Arthur wrote stiff, technically excellent prose with nothing to capture Matthew's heart or suck him into a new world. His writing had a kind of beauty and rhythm, true, but the story bored him.

Matthew loved books. But he loved books that offered protection most of all. This one, on the other hand, seemed to peel off bits of his defenses to expose him to the most terrifying elements of all—those against which he had innumerable cracks in his walls.

"What are you reading, Matthew?" Francis asked that night after dinner. "Something for school?"

Matthew, still wondering why Francis had pulled him out of school again that day—he wasn't running a fever or falling ill or even struggling to stay ahead in any of his classes anymore—answered, "It's one of Arthur Kirkland's books."

Francis froze, the blue scarf he was knitting (not that he'd need it for the rest of the year) hanging in mid-air from the purple needles clenched in his fingers.

"Oh. Is it as terrible as I'm imagining?"

"Technically, it's nice. Great, even." Matthew shrugged. "But it's really not engaging or exciting or even fun at all."

"Just like the man himself."

Matthew chose not to respond. He continued reading for a few moments, suppressing a yawn here and an urge to set down the book for good there, until Francis made his blood crystallize with one question.

"Have you done any of your college applications yet?"

He clutched the book. His knuckles, criss-crossed with pink scars, went white.

"Francis—I mean—haven't we, well, talked about this a few times already?"

"Of course. And I still think you're making a mistake."

"S-Sure." Matthew blinked and licked his lips. They'd grown chapped from his bad habit, but he could hardly help that. "And you're—you're probably right. So I turned in my application to Sacramento State just this morning. While you were at work and before I got there."

"Matthew." Francis set down his knitting, his smile fading like a light being switched off. "Don't lie to me, _mon coeur_."

Matthew's heart sputtered in his chest.

"But—but I'm not lying, Francis."

"Yes, you are. It's obvious. Matthew, I just—it's just..." Francis took a deep breath and uncrossed and re-crossed his legs. Matthew clutched the book tighter, his fingernails digging into the pristine white pages. "We can't do this anymore. We can't keep living like this any longer."

Matthew strained his shoulders, curling them forward as if they could fold him in and hold him close. The muggy air smelled of dust and musty carpet that he was supposed to vacuum that morning but hadn't. He couldn't. The Bissell made too much noise, the way the cigarette burns smoldered too much beneath his sticky long sleeves. Everything was too much.

In the distance, held off only by the thin walls of their apartment, the structures meant to keep them both safe and warm, something shattered with a sharp crash, like a glass grenade. Matthew jumped but an instant later forced himself to remain still.

"Yes, Francis. Yes, I think you're right." Matthew smiled. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. "We can't do this anymore. I'll do better, promise. I'll be good. I'll bring you the application tomorrow at work after school so you can look at it and tell me it's good."

He stared down at his book, the words and letters all blending together in a cold, colorless jumble, like a nonsensical feverish dream. He couldn't look at Francis.

"I'm going to bed now. I'm tired. I want to sleep. Please let me go to sleep now. Please."

As he spoke, Matthew pushed himself out of the chair, limbs shaking, and backed toward the hallway. He could still feel someone standing behind him, flicking ashes off his singed cigarette, holding the remnants of a broke plate in his hand.

He turned. Then he ran.

And Francis made his biggest mistake.

He yelled after Matthew.

The sound refused to leave Matthew's ears, haunting them as he tore down his favorite book from beneath his pillow and began to read, ripping out the years-old embroidered bookmark and gasping for air as he turned page after page until he reached the end. Even the knocks on the door and the calls that please, couldn't they talk about it and it was an accident and he didn't mean it but they just needed to talk and Matthew, please, open the door.

* * *

Alfred tapped his pen on the bar counter, chin cupped in his free hand, waiting for his new employee to arrive.

This probably wasn't a good idea. Then again, opening the cafe in the first place didn't seem likely to make his list of most brilliant ideas anymore. At the time, when he'd been dizzy and giggly and more than confident, he thought he'd finally found his chance to follow his childhood dream of owning his own establishment.

And then he'd messed it up.

He'd given up blaming Arthur-Fucking-Kirkland. Jerk though he was, he probably hadn't meant them harm in the first place. He couldn't have expected that question during his interview. If Arthur'd gone and hated on Nineteen-Eighty FOOD every chance he'd gotten over the past two weeks, he'd only done it because Alfred had asked him to, even if he hadn't realized just what he was asking for at the time.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

He didn't know why he expected Arthur to arrive early; the man struck him as more likely to arrive just on time, down to the second. And the clock on the wall—one of Alfred's favorite parts of the cafe decor, thanks to its portraits of authors that marked every hour—only read five after eight. The place was empty: even Francis hadn't yet returned from taking Matthew to school, leaving only Alfred to prep everything to open on time. Which he had done a long time ago already, leaving him with the faint tapping of his pen, the smell of chlorine from wiping down the counter after spilling his boiling coffee everywhere, and the sting of his conscience.

And the stares of the clock authors.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Alfred wasn't sure when or how he'd managed to fall asleep, but he woke, snoozing and drooling, to a dull pounding noise.

He pulled his glasses out of his hair and rubbed his eyes. Arthur Kirkland stood outside, banging on the front window just beside (or maybe on?) one of the American flags.

Right. Shit. He hadn't unlocked the front door yet.

"Sorry, said Alfred as, with the familiar chime of the front door opening, he let Arthur inside. "Hope you weren't waiting long."

"Not terribly long. Only about five minutes."

Alfred glanced back over his shoulder at the man following him to the bar counter. He'd forgotten to tell him what to wear, but the crisp black slacks and tucked-in pressed shirt so white it almost hurt his eyes would work fine, he supposed. He usually wore a rundown, typical twenty-something version of Arthur's attire, anyway.

They sat down at the swiveling, somewhat screechy black barstools, Arthur crossing his legs and Alfred swinging his.

"You're here early," said Alfred after a peek at the clock. Eight-fifteen. "Writing not going well or something?"

"All right. Rule number one." Arthur frowned. "You will never ask me about writing. Ever."

A bit taken aback, Alfred paused a moment before shrugging.

"Fair enough. Any others you need to get off your—I mean, we need to get out of the way?"

"Yes. Number two: I get free tea whenever I want, plus time to drink it."

"Sounds fine—"

"I'm not finished. Number three: no one makes a single joke about my eyebrows." Arthur cleared his throat. "Number four: I get time to talk to Matthew about books every day I work."

Alfred raised an eyebrow.

"I really think he likes his alone time in the afternoon—school tires him out and stuff—"

"Did I say these were negotiable?"

"No. No, you didn't." Alfred wondered how he was going to break the news to Matthew that his sacred reading time wouldn't be so holy anymore. "All right, then. No writing questions or eyebrow jokes, plus time to drink tea—free tea—and afternoon book club with Mattie. That it?"

"For now, yes."

"Awesome." Alfred poured himself another cup of coffee, as slowly as a scientist measuring out some toxic chemical. He'd rinsed his hands under freezing water enough times today already. "Well, you're shaping up to be about the most low-maintenance employee I have."

"Can't say as that was my goal."

"No, seriously. No one wants to work more than two days in a row, they all fight over who gets which section of the cafe, everyone wants as much free food as they can carry—you get it." He chuckled. "But I guess I was there once, too. Trying to make it through college on a server's pay, balance classes, all that crap."

Alfred poured nigh half a sugar shaker into his coffee.

"Anyway. I can't really start you off as a server, though. Not until you've done some time as a host, at least, which'll help a lot, actually. Assuming we start getting people again, but—well, you know."

Arthur just looked at him.

"I mean, unless you had something else in mind."

Alfred almost hoped he would object to a host position. He couldn't see this grouchy, pompous author deigning to lead people to tables and hand out menus—then again, he couldn't have imagined Arthur deigning to work at the cafe at all—but he really did have to learn hosting before he could much of anything else, except work as a janitor.

He decided not to tempt Arthur with that one.

When Arthur gave no answer, Alfred said, "I guess I'll go ahead and show you the table chart," before leading the other man to the host podium, which was decorated with strips of wallpaper and streaks of paint to look like a copy of _Nineteen-Eighty Four_. Menacing blue eye and all. Maybe this actually beat the clock o' authors, Alfred thought.

"It's pretty self-explanatory." He handed Arthur the chart with a smile. "Each table in the cafe has a number. And see how they're different colors? Each color makes up a section. Different people work in different sections every day. When I'm not swamped at the bar—so like this morning and this afternoon—I get section one, that row along the windows there."

Arthur's gaze followed Alfred as he pointed out his row of tables and all the other sections.

"Oh, another thing. You'll have to answer the phone when I'm busy. That shouldn't be too hard. It's mostly people wanting stuff to go. If that happens, just grab me and I'll take it. Any questions so far?"

Arthur shook his head and remarked that everything was perfectly simple and self-explanatory, thank you.

"Okay then. Let's see. We don't open for a while yet, and I've done all the prep stuff I can do until Francis gets here. I'm gonna go steal some of his pastry dough. You want any?"

One look from Arthur had him backpedaling and giggling his way to the kitchen.

When he returned, a small bowl of cookie dough in hand, Arthur was sitting in his usual table with a cup of steaming tea. How he'd managed to find it without anyone showing him where they kept the Bigelow and Twinings, Alfred wasn't sure. The man must have had a bloodhound nose for the stuff. Maybe he could start calling him a teahound.

He figured he'd better not push his luck any further.

That plan failed when he caught Arthur running his fingers along the spines of the books in the big shelf that ran around the cafe and, to his surprise, smiling to himself. After a moment, he picked one, extracting it from between the other books as a paleontologist might pull a fragile fossil from rock and mud, and opened it. His grin didn't fade but only grew a little wider with each turn of the dusty pages.

Alfred walked over, licking melted chocolate from his fingers. Okay, so he'd ruled out any questions about writing, but that didn't mean he couldn't ask about reading, right?

"Whatcha got there?"

Apparently not. Arthur looked about ready to throw the book at him.

"Geez, I get it. You're just like Mattie." He wolfed down another hunk of dough. "Neither one of you likes to be bugged when you're reading. You book junkies are all the same."

"And you aren't a 'book junkie'? Your words, not mine, of course."

"Hm?" Alfred ran his finger along the edge of the bowl, trying to pick up any last bits of the wet dough and wondering if he could get any more without Francis noticing. Probably not. "Well, no. You two are always reading or writing or whatever. You coulda been born with books in your hands. That's not me at all. I hardly ever read."

"You? Hardly ever read? Have you ever looked around this place?"

Alfred looked back at the clock and podium, his gaze switching back and forth between the thin lampshades hanging over the tables and the bar before meandering over the bookshelves.

"Sure, yeah. I mean, I get that it's full of books and stuff, but that doesn't mean I like books or reading or anything."

"You don't like books and yet you created and run a cafe based entirely around literature." Arthur took a sip of his tea and gave Alfred a smug smile.

"Well—okay, fine, books are nice. Doesn't mean I read them or anything. I'm not really smart enough to understand all that stuff. I bet I couldn't even figure out one of your novels."

"That's half the purpose of my books, you know. They're hardly pedestrian. But you're missing the point, as usual."

Alfred sat down on the other side of the booth, expecting Arthur to grumble and gripe at him to move, but no objection came.

"What makes you think you're not smart enough?"

"I didn't finish college. That's one thing. I don't have the brains for reading."

"Oh, please, I started writing my best work before I'd even stepped into Oxford." Arthur waved his hand. "Of course, I came out smarter, but I was smart enough before I started classes. University isn't a recipe for instant intelligence."

"You sure? You mean a degree's not a package of Instant Brain—Just Add Water?"

"I have no idea what you're going on about now."

Alfred laughed. "Never mind. You wouldn't get it."

"And maybe what I'm saying is lost on you. But whether you're stupid or not, you do read, Alfred. Even if it's just to come up with asinine—don't you dare laugh at that word—puns. You read. Even if it's for your own rather unconventional and, frankly, incomprehensible reasons."

"If you say so." But Alfred's eyes were twinkling as he stood up and went to open the door for Francis, who had just arrived and, as usual, couldn't find his key. "I should go through your books for puns. We could name something after you."

"You wouldn't dare—"

"I've already got one. Confessions of a Man Caught in a Compote. How's that?"

"I'll quit before that happens."

"Nah, you won't. I don't think you'd quit if your life depended on it at this point."

Alfred smiled.

He knew he had Arthur Kirkland under control. Though he hadn't expected him to bring light to the darkest, saddest parts of his life. To make him smile where before, he'd only feigned a folksy, aw-shucks kind of ignorance. A pretend stupidity. When deep down, he apparently wasn't that stupid after all.

Maybe in the end, Arthur-Fucking-Kirkland still had a bit of power. Just a tiny bit.

* * *

As Alfred had expected, no one came into the cafe except the Awesome Oldies (sans Romulus's grandsons this time), and they seated themselves at their regular table, though not without some protest from Arthur.

"Can't you read?" He grabbed the stand of the black sign beside the host podium. "It says to wait to be seated."

"Somebody's got a stick up his ass," said Helena as she sat down beside Hatshepsut and tucked her white curls behind her ears.

"Be nice, Helena," said Hatshepsut.

"Why be nice to a weakling like him?" asked Romulus. "I could have taken him down any day back when I was in my prime, easy as pie. Speaking of pie, Alfred, get me some—"

"Shut up, Romulus," said the two women.

With nothing else to do, Arthur had spent most of his morning at his booth with a book and two different kinds of tea until Francis got fed up with his laziness.

"There's plenty of stuff for you to do," he said, shoving a mop into the writer's hand. "Like clean up the kitchen. And when you're done with that, sweep the floor out here. Romulus makes a mess of everything he touches."

Arthur had protested at first, but after a quick glance at Alfred, he rolled his eyes, glared at Francis, and trudged after him to the back of the cafe. He spent the rest of the morning cleaning up whatever Francis told him to, though he held his ground over cleaning the bathrooms. Alfred had to take over there.

He'd just started clearing the plates from the elderly trio's table, mopping up the crumbly mess of pie crust Romulus had left all over the cushiony seat and mumbling about what to do with the pill bottle Helena had left on the table, when Matthew walked in.

Before Francis could say anything, Arthur had already greeted the boy and wrenched his backpack from his tight grip.

"Hope you're not too tired from school," he said. "Let's go sit down—I picked out this wonderful book that I think you'll like. Just let me go take it back down from the shelf."

"And leave me to finish cleaning, I assume," called Francis from the kitchen door.

"There's always time to clean, but there's never enough time to discuss great works of literature. Aristotle himself said the contemplative life was higher than the active."

"Yeah, listen to the Macewindows."

"Macedonians, Alfred."

"I bet when you went to Oxford, you were the annoying, all-knowing prick," said Francis.

"No, actually." Arthur reached for the book he'd picked to discuss with Matthew. "I was the shy, quiet kid who spent all his time in the library. If you must know."

Matthew stiffened, his fingers gripping the tabletop so tight both Francis and Arthur could see him straining from a distance. Francis stared at him, waiting for some sort of reaction. None came.

Arthur's gaze slowly shifted back and forth between the two. His brows furrowed.

The silence, thick and smothering, lingered for a few moments, not even Alfred daring to break it, until Arthur retrieved the book and brought it to Matthew's table. Francis disappeared back into the kitchen.

"So this gentleman, Allistor Kirkland—no relation, of course," said Arthur, pushing the book toward Matthew, who hadn't yet let go of the tabletop, "was inspired by Lewis Carroll and his work. I thought you might enjoy reading his first book, _Sonata in a Mirror_. It's far from best book I've ever read, and not the best he's ever written, but you came to mind straight away when I was perusing it earlier."

He waited, staying quiet and still until Matthew let go of the table finger by finger and reached for the book. His hand rested on its smooth cover, only a little scuffed and scratched in comparison to some of the other books Arthur had found on the shelves.

Arthur kept his voice just as gentle.

"I went to school with him, you know. Quite a nice fellow. He was also a patron of the library. Had his own special desk in the corner on the top floor and everything."

Matthew's gaze flickered up to meet Arthur's. His eyes didn't seem angry but rather as if they were waiting for something. Staying cautious for the tiny flash on the horizon that he couldn't quite make out yet. Waiting for it to make a move toward him.

And then easing as he saw it was not a threat at all.

"You make it sound like everyone there holed up in the library. That sort of defeats the point, doesn't it?"

"It was a big library, Matthew." Arthur laughed. Smart kid. "We probably all could have fit in there if we needed to. Fortunately, Oxford had a lot of libraries. Allistor and I just happened to pick the same one as our own.

"Read that book and tell me what you think of it. You're probably so busy with other work, your bag is so heavy." He lifted it up with a grimace, eliciting a small smile that hardly reached to Matthew's eyes—but a smile all the same. "But still. Just read a chapter or two and give me your thoughts tomorrow."

"Okay. Do you need anything else?"

"What? Oh, no, I'll leave you to read. Maybe you'll finish that one—unlike _Alice in Wonderland,_ yeah?"

"I finished it." Matthew's gaze fell away from Arthur's and back to the table. "Last night."

Arthur didn't have to be an author or even a psychologist to guess that finishing the book meant something more to Matthew than it should have. Something more negative, at least. He always felt a little wistful at the end of a great story, as if he'd finally been forced to close the lid on a treasure chest that contained wisdom and understanding—prizes brighter and worthier than glittering gold. And sometimes, the lessons a book taught him burned so bright he hurt for days afterward.

Some books even blinded him for life. Carved their messages into his heart, cold as it was, and so deep that he felt the indentations with every throb.

This book had written something terrible into Matthew.

"Ah, did you? Nice story, isn't it?"

Matthew tilted his head from one side to another.

"Yeah. It was nice."

Francis came back from the kitchen then, and Matthew was quick to flip the book open and hold it with one end on the table, hiding his face as he turned to chapter one. Arthur didn't talk to him again until the next afternoon when he returned from school, looking as tired and red-faced as ever. The moment he walked in, Arthur carried his bag to Matthew's usual table as he had yesterday and sat down across from him.

He had to sit in silence for a few moments before Matthew said something about Allistor's book. Arthur was impatient and knew he could have forced the boy to answer any question he posed—whether he had enjoyed the book, whether he had thought it well-written and worth his time, whether he had liked the author.

He decided to wait instead.

"I read the first two chapters last night before bed."

Arthur nodded and took a sip of his tea. He'd offered Matthew a piping hot cuppa, but he had declined with a small shake of his head and an equally little smile.

"I think it's good." Matthew took _Sonata in a Mirror_ out of his backpack and put it on the table. He'd stuck a pen in it to mark his place. "Allistor writes well."

"You think so?"

"Yeah. Isn't that what happens to people at Oxford who hole up in the library?"

Arthur opened his mouth to respond, thought about Matthew's sarcastic remark and his cocked eyebrow (almost daring him to disagree, he noted, though Matthew seemed to fear his own defiance), and granted him a chuckle.

"Touché." He took a cell phone out of his pocket. "How'd you like to meet the man himself?"

* * *

Francis smirked.

He had to admit, he liked seeing Arthur overrun and berated. Someone had to give the asshole a piece of his mind.

Hearing Allistor Kirkland, Pulitzer-Prize winner and famous novelist and most certainly no relation to a certain cantankerous Englishman, chew Arthur Kirkland out for every petty sin he'd ever committed—locking him in the library, laughing at his commencement speech at Harvard a few years back, calling his pet Bichon a poodle in an interview in some paper that neither author remembered—pleased him enough. His kind gesture had clearly backfired.

Francis still sighed a little for his son. True, the boy hadn't even shown up to meet this Kirkland fellow when Arthur had called him last week and asked him to come to the cafe ("Isn't that the place you slammed on that English TV show?" "Shut up, Allistor."), though the thought of meeting an author whose book he'd enjoyed so much had buoyed even his drowning spirits. Instead of coming to the cafe after school, as Arthur had arranged for him to do so he could talk to Allistor, Matthew was spending that afternoon at home with a migraine. Francis hadn't thought it wise to question the boy any further than asking if he wanted to go to school which, of course, he didn't.

He should have known that Matthew would go if he hadn't left already. Ever since their fight, Matthew had gotten up before him to walk the whole five miles to school by himself in the early morning.

He didn't know what to say to make him smile. He didn't know how to tell his son that he was safe, that he wouldn't hurt him. He didn't know how to break his heart open and fill in all the cracks with his love.

But Arthur-Fucking-Kirkland did.

Allistor shoved his chair back, slammed his teacup down on his speckled black saucer covered in spilled cream, and put on his jacket. He said something to Arthur, who simply smirked in reply, but Francis couldn't hear quite what from his hiding place just behind the kitchen door. Beside him, Alfred asked, "D'you think he left me a good tip?"

Francis rolled his eyes. He sometimes wondered if Alfred cared about anything else. Oh, right, he cared about alcohol.

The front door banged shut, and Alfred tiptoed out of the kitchen and over to the table where Arthur sat sipping his tea and drumming his fingers on a book. Francis poked his head out of the door and pretended to stir the pastry dough in the bowl he clutched to his chest. Held tight in his arms, where Matthew belonged.

"Well—I mean, I guess I'm sorry. That he was mean to you and Matt didn't show up and all that—"

"Oh, Alfred." Arthur stirred his tea with a small silver spoon he must have brought himself (Francis didn't remember having any teaspoons like that in the cafe). "Yet again you underestimate my brilliance."

"Um, okay."

"I have saved the cafe."

"Since when did you care so much about us?" Francis didn't bother pretending to stir anymore. The metal spoon stopped in the batter as he clenched his fist. "Since you could get something out of us?"

"Francis, let's listen to him."

"Oh, right, let's listen to the person who fucked us over how many times now?"

"And works of pure art those acts of sabotage were." Arthur smiled. "But this is even more brilliant. I didn't bring Allistor here so Matthew could meet him. Well, I did, but there's more than that. Using some choice stories from our university days—ones he may not want others to know—I got him to agree to bring his entire staff here while they're in town promoting his newest book, _Noli Timere, Mon Amour_."

"Isn't that technically mixing languages or something?"

"Isn't that technically missing the point, Alfred?"

"Get on with it, you two."

"No, no, I get it," said Alfred, pocketing the wad of bills Kirkland had left him. Francis couldn't help but wonder if the man had left dollars or pounds. He figured Alfred wouldn't notice the difference for a while. "Since no one will believe a word you say about Nineteen-Eighty FOOD anymore, you got someone else to do the promotion work for you."

"A little rough in terms of finesse, but not terrible, Alfred. You got the basic points. Specifically, I picked someone who was so upset about his precious dog being called a poodle that he doesn't pay attention to my interviews anymore. Someone who won't know a thing about what I said regarding this place. And he can bring the entire board of the _Sacramento Magazine_ if he likes what he sees."

Alfred jumped up and down, stopping just short of throwing his arms around Arthur. The two men sat down and began discussing a plan of action for the coming weekend when, Arthur said, about twenty people would be coming to the cafe for dinner. As much as Alfred waved for Francis to come over and plan out a menu with them, he still shook his head and walked back into the kitchen. Needed a cigarette, he said.

The wide room with its shelves of ingredients and racks of spices always created a sense of serenity that started somewhere deep inside Francis and radiated outward until it tingled, warm and close, just beneath his skin. He'd grown up cooking and baking the way Matthew had grown up reading books. Whisks and spoons and sifters had been his rattles and pacifiers and coloring books. His first birthday present had been an Easy-Bake Oven, and he'd taken such joy in creating different recipes for his Maman and Papa to eat. The moment he graduated to the stove and real oven, he'd made crêpes and omelettes for breakfast every morning. His parents had wanted to send him to culinary school in France, to help him transition from a young sous-chef to an experienced exec.

But they had been poor.

And moving to America, even out to California, hadn't given him the money he'd hoped it would. Many restaurants liked his French accent and training enough to disregard his lack of citizenship and questionable eligibility for work. He'd been lucky. Yes, "lucky," that was the word for it, Francis thought. He should have been thanking the stars that had aligned to give him a job just before his landlord had evicted him. He should have been blessing God for giving him money to pay his bills and to feed himself. For giving him Alfred as his one of his first real friends after a year of floundering in Sacramento.

His ingratitude had probably been what kept him stuck in sous-chef or, worse, line-cook positions. His failure to accept things as they were kept him on the ground, but not on his knees.

He'd saved that moment of prayer for the day he'd adopted Matthew.

And yet now the world was taking away his son, too.

Or, rather, Arthur Kirkland was taking him away. Just as he'd taken their livelihood away. Just as he'd monopolized Alfred's friendship.

Just as he'd yanked Francis's joy clean out of his heart.

He lit his cigarette, not bothering to step outside, and let it burn to ashes between his lips.

* * *

When the fateful Saturday arrived, Alfred insisted on giving Arthur the night off. He thought that maybe Francis would want some help in the kitchen but decided against offering him any aid that reeked of an Englishman.

"We'll be fine, really." He straightened his bowtie and smiled at Arthur. "I think I've already worked out all my kinks. Drunk phone calls do tend to get rid of all of those problems."

Arthur gave him a look that was probably meant to cut him down a bit but only made him laugh.

Alfred had grown out of most of his nervousness long ago. Tiring and hectic as it could sometimes (more like always) be, working as a server had bolstered his confidence and people skills, both of which tended to waver in most young men during their teenage years. Alfred's had developed instead.

For the most part, anyway. Meaning when he was sober.

Alfred glanced back at the clock o' authors. Fifteen minutes until Allistor would arrive. He had time, especially since Arthur had warned him that the man was not exactly punctual.

"He'd arrive after lectures had already finished and call it 'on-time,'" Arthur had scoffed as they'd put the finishing touches on their plans for the night.

As the author turned to leave, Alfred cleared his throat. Now was a good a moment as any to ask.

"Why're you so insistent on helping us?"

Arthur turned and raised an eyebrow.

"Why do you insist on bringing up the phone call every second?"

"Why are you answering my question with a question?"

Arthur rolled his eyes and threw his hands in the air.

"You're a bit of a lost cause, you know?"

"That's another question, isn't it?"

"You—oh, whatever. That's beside the point. You keep bringing up the phone call because you appease your guilt by making jokes about it. You feel better about yourself if you can laugh at yourself."

"Way to go, Freud." Alfred gave him a thumbs-up, which looked a little ridiculous given his handsome suit and shoes polished so well that they reflected every glint of the cozy cafe lights. He didn't care. "And—you know I'm sorry. Not because it sank us. Not because it's made my life and Francis's life and Mattie's life hell. But because it was a shitty thing to do."

Alfred looked down at his shoes. The polish didn't seem right on him. He'd look better in slightly scuffed sneakers and dirty, mismatched socks.

"I know. It was a very shitty thing to do." Arthur pursed his lips. "And yet, I guess I have to forgive you. It's what civilized people do."

"Aww, thanks, man." He tried to brush off Arthur's forgiveness as something he'd expected, but, in fact, Alfred had expected none of this. Neither redemption nor a second chance. Nor even a friendship with this strange man.

"But now it's my turn," said Alfred. "You're helping us because you're a good person deep down beneath all that grumpiness. Alfred 1, Artie 1. Would ya look at that: we're even."

"First of all, no one gave you permission to call me 'Artie.' I will make that rule number five: no nicknames." Arthur folded his arms. Alfred just giggled. The more like a sourpuss Arthur looked, the funnier Alfred found him. "And in response to your first query, I invoke rule number one."

"Dude, you know I don't remember the numbers of your rules—"

"Of course you do. Rule number one: you will not ask me about my writing. Ever."

"But I didn't—"

"I came to help you for the same reason I write. And you're not allowed to ask about that."

Alfred looked back at the clock. Ten more minutes until Allistor's arrival. He fingered the gritty edges of the tens and twenties he'd put in his book in case any of the author's crew wanted to pay him with cash. They likely wouldn't, opting to use some shiny gold credit card instead, but Alfred believed in being ready for any situation as a waiter. The last time he had walked into a shift unprepared, a party of thirty rowdy teenagers had happened. And he didn't want a party of thirty rowdy teenagers to happen again.

He didn't often act like it, but Alfred could be responsible when needed. He'd worked his way through three years of college and found himself an apartment and new life without anyone's help. He knew how to be an adult. He didn't like being grown-up, but when pinched and pushed and pulled in all sorts of directions, Alfred soared and raced to do anything he had to take care of himself.

But even more than that, he jumped straight into anything he thought would help those he loved. No matter how much it hurt him or frustrated him.

"I'm not allowed to ask about it, sure." Alfred straightened the crinkled edge of a twenty that he prayed wasn't a counterfeit. The detector had been broken ever since Romulus set hands on it and accidentally broke the "shiny, pretty" UV lamp. Francis still hadn't gotten over it, though Matthew'd pointed out that they did have other methods of testing currency. Alfred just didn't find them as cool. "But that doesn't mean you can't talk about it if you want. I'll listen."

"Like hell you will." Arthur sighed. Then, he shifted a little, the dim ceiling light sparkling off the silver pen in his breast pocket and straight into Alfred's eyes, making him squint so much he almost missed the sad shifting of Arthur's gaze to meet his. "It's the guilt. I write because of the guilt."

Alfred paused. He wanted to think of a kind, intelligent response, but all he could muster was, "Really?"

"Yes, really." Arthur's stare mixed the most defensive parts of a frown with all the heavy fear of a sad smile. "I don't want to go into the details. But it's the guilt."

"I don't want to ask you about it or anything. You can keep it a secret if you want."

"Please."

"I mean, I got plenty of secrets myself." Alfred folded his hands behind his back and leaned against the wall. "Like when I went to my uncle's funeral as a kid. I was like two or something."

"Oh?"

Alfred ignored the hint of condescension in the author's voice and his raised eyebrow—wait, he wasn't supposed to make fun of those. That was rule number whatever. "Yeah. I was at the reception afterwards, and for whatever reason, I thought it'd be a good idea to jump up on a table and start dancing and taking all my clothes off."

For what was probably the first time in his life, Arthur Kirkland had run out of words. He squinted, mouth open, head tilted, staring at Alfred.

Then, he began to laugh, and it was Al's turn to stare.

Sure, he'd seen the writer smile before, both as a pleasantry and as an insuppressible sign of the joy he seemed to get from reading and talking about books. His smile whenever he showed Matt a new book or picked one off the shelves just slid onto his face, unhidden, perhaps even unnoticed.

When he had pages to turn or covers to open, when he wasn't forcing himself to play nice, he had a handsome smile.

And, Alfred found, he had an even warmer laugh. Real and natural. Not sweet or gentle on the ears—his awful accent sharpened all the soft edges of his voice—but the kind of laugh that buoyed those who heard it, as though they'd been lost outside in the cold and had found shelter and warm, fleecy blankets to wrap themselves in.

He wondered when this laugh had disappeared. When a frown and scalding words had stolen its place, when Arthur had realized he had to hide his amusement. When he stopped sheltering others and maybe even himself with his delight.

Alfred would probably never know. At least, not for a long time. The look Arthur had given him earlier revealed deep wounds that bled still, though not within the man himself. The scabs oozed on other hearts, injuries that Arthur had inflicted but struggled to staunch, to stitch, to heal.

He understood that part of the guilt thing well enough, he thought.

And still, he laughed, too. So Arthur wouldn't be as alone.

"You know," said Arthur, "at least you probably made a lot of sad people happy."

"Try telling that to my parents. They were horrified. I wasn't allowed at my dad's family reunions until I was twelve, and even then they pretended my crazy big brother had been the wannabe stripper. I don't even have a big brother, man."

"Too bad." Arthur put a hand over his mouth and bit back the rest of his giggles. "I suppose Allistor will be here soon. I'll let you finish getting everything ready and go home for the evening."

"M'kay, and thanks for your help making this happen. We're gonna knock his knickers off."

"I don't think such a move is in your best interest."

"Whatever you say, Artie."

He scowled at Alfred over his shoulder and mumbled something about rule number five and how he was really going to need to learn some decency and politeness if he wanted to succeed in life, but do have a good night and don't screw up too badly.

Alfred smiled.

He could smell Francis's Agatha Crispies coming out of the oven.

* * *

When Arthur returned two hours later, feeling himself drawn back to the cafe to make sure for himself that, despite Alfred's phone call that everything had been fine, Allistor hadn't been awful or they hadn't screwed up.

He found Alfred, bowtie undone and hanging down his chest, plopped down in a chair and slouching next to Francis, who was nibbling on a few leftover desserts arranged on a small black tray covered with little forks and white doilies. A mess of half-full measuring cups and bowls with bits of food encrusted around the rims covered the kitchen counters behind them and filled both sinks. The faint scent of steak sauce lingered just beneath the almost-cloying smell of Francis's desserts.

"It really did go well, then?" asked Arthur, adjusting his red tie.

Francis put his feet up on only other empty chair in the kitchen. Arthur glared and got a grin in response.

"Yeah, I told you that already," said Alfred. Arthur let his shoulders fall away from where they'd scrunched up close to his ears. "We talked a lot about your books."

And there went his relief.

He turned about as green as his eyes. Alfred didn't pay any attention.

"He liked talking about the one about pirates the most."

"Oh good heavens." Arthur's hands froze around his tie, clenching it tight between his pale fingers. "Spare me. Not that one."

"And it sounded so awesome that I read parts of it in between taking care of their tables. We had it on one of the shelves in the very back. They weren't real high-maintenance, so I got several chapters done."

"Ah, well—I'm terribly sorry about that one; it just didn't—"

"I totally loved it, bro. Best book ever. Those really were some phenomenal pirates. Nice title." Alfred reached for one of Francis's pastries, but the Frenchman slapped his hand away, mumbling something about how Alfred had had too much sugar that evening already. As much as Alfred stuck out his lip and whined, Francis refused to yield.

"Wait," said Arthur, hoping to intervene lest the two start World War III in the kitchen. "Wait, you've got it all wrong. The title of that book was _The Phenomonological Pirates_ —"

"Phenomonowhat?" _Slap_ , went Francis's hand down on Alfred's.

"Did… did you even understand it?"

"Of course, dude. It was about phenomenal pirates—Francis pleaaaase can't I have just one?"

Arthur blinked.

"You mean you missed my entire philosophical treatise on piracy as examined through the eyes of the young protagonist on board the ship?"

"Wait, what?"

With a sigh, Francis finally pushed a slice of cake over onto one side of the tray. Alfred snatched it up and informed Arthur as he chewed that they'd served Allistor and his staff a sample of their newest item, a fruitcake he'd christened Arthur Cakeland. He shoved a piece at Arthur, who looked at it with blank eyes.

"Please kill me. Summarily."

"No, don't worry, Allistor's summary of your book was fine. He said anyone could gobble it up the way a dog gobbles up its breakfast."

"You know what? I just—I don't—I can't—"

"You don't and can't what, _Monsieur_ Author?" Francis asked. "And please don't sob into the food. I know you're the only one who will be eating it, but it's still unsanitary."

Despite himself, Arthur sniffled.

A quiet tap on the door interrupted their conversation. Alfred about dropped his plate and jumped on top of Francis, but he relaxed when he saw Matthew trudging into the kitchen, his plaid pajama pants dragging and his shoes clapping on the tile floor.

"Oh, hey, Matt," said Alfred. "Dude, you should call if you're just gonna walk in—you 'bout scared the shit outta—"

"Matthew, what are you doing here?" Francis pushed the tray back onto the counter and rose to his feet in one swift movement. Alfred, looking from side to side, snatched up the last two slices of fruitcake and shoved them into his pockets. Arthur thought about reprimanding him but figured the older man deserved to have his desserts stolen for denying him a chair. "You don't feel well. You should be sleeping or in bed, at least—not over here. We told you we'd take care of this."

Matthew shrunk back a little against the door and pointed to Arthur.

"Why is he sniffling?" asked Matthew.

"I'm not doing something so undignified—"

"He didn't like the summary of his book," said Alfred and Francis together.

Arthur sniveled again.

"But really, Matthew, never mind him. You need to go home. I'll walk you back."

"No." Matthew swallowed. Arthur looked at him out of the corner of his eye, with Alfred turning his head to watch as well. "It's fine."

"It's not. I just want to make sure you get back okay." Francis crossed his arms and then uncrossed them again. He shifted from one foot to the other. "You don't feel well."

Matthew played with his unkempt hair, pulling down on a few wavy strands at a time. His father didn't move any closer, as though waiting for Matthew to come to him first. The room fell silent; even Alfred had stopped chewing the bits of fruitcake that had missed his pockets.

"I think he should stay," said Arthur after a moment. He didn't like the tension. He didn't like that he had only a few pieces of the story—he wanted to know the rest, and not only because he was an author. "He's part of the cafe, too."

Arthur turned to Matthew, who had decided the floor was more interesting than any of them.

"You certainly didn't just come here to stare at the floor," he said. "Did you just want to know how things went with Allistor coming here?"

Matthew nodded.

"I said I'd tell you about it when I came home, _mon coeur_ ," said Francis.

"You said you'd tell me if I was still awake. That's different."

"Dude, Matt—"

"No, no, I'm sorry. That's not what I meant." Matthew looked up. His gaze met Alfred's and then Francis's, where it stayed for a second before dropping to the floor again. "I didn't mean that at all. I'm sorry. I was just curious. And you were here late and I didn't know if things were okay, and—never mind, it's fine."

And then it started. His fists began clenching again, as though he were about to hit someone.

Arthur suspected his target could be Matthew himself.

"But I can walk myself home. I'm not a—well, I mean, I just wanted to say I'm not a kid and I can walk by myself and that's all."

He laughed. Scuffed his shoes on the floor with little squeaks that cut through the silence taking over now that his soft voice had faded.

"And I think you're precisely right, Matthew."

Arthur took the two steps between them with small, easy strides, and leaned against the wall, sticky from torn-down Scotch tape and old employee-rights posters, beside the boy. He wondered if he should put a hand on his shoulder.

"I came back because I wanted to make sure Allistor hadn't torn their heads off. Can be a bit grumpy like that, you know. I don't see anything wrong with what you did, and you only live across the street, yeah? Nothing to worry about here."

He held his hands up and looked straight at Francis. They could at least agree over this one small matter. Then they could go back to fruitcakes that really should have borne Alfred's name rather than his and talk about the teas they'd served the Scotsman's staff. They could strategize.

Or, more likely, they could rest.

Maybe he'd even deign to help clean the kitchen. He could put away at least a few of the dishes that were still half-full with water dripping from the faucet with gentle _plops_ every few minutes.

"Leave him alone."

Or, you know, they could also disagree. Arthur was good at playing that game.

"He has a point, you know. What kind of father treats his eighteen-year-old like a child?"

"He's seventeen, and that shows how much you know about my son." Francis stepped forward. "Look, Alfred can handle the rest of the dishes—"

"—I can?"

"You stay out of this." Francis's head jerked toward Alfred, who took a step back, a frown knitting together on his face, before he sat back down and turned his back to the conversation. "Matthew, let's go home. We can forget about this."

Arthur smiled when Matthew looked up at him. Francis was being perfectly unreasonable, and Arthur could see that the boy had come to see sense. He didn't have to put up with this kind of control, this sort of manipulation.

"You're right," said Matthew.

Alfred walked out of the kitchen. No one but Arthur watched him.

"Let's go home, Francis."

Matthew didn't resist as Francis put an arm around his shoulders and led him back to their apartment. He didn't complain as the man insisted that they take the rundown elevator, creaky as its cables sounded and touchy as it made his stomach, rather than the stairs so he wouldn't be so tired.

He knew how the evening would go already.

Francis wouldn't tell him anything about Allistor Kirkland's visit to Nineteen-Eighty FOOD. He'd smile and say everything went well but wasn't he tired? Didn't he want to go to bed? They could talk about it in the morning, except that Francis would sleep in and Matthew would lie in bed reading until his curiosity got the better of him and just called Alfred for last night's special report. Al would deliver it just like an overdramatic newscaster, and Matthew would smile and think about how much he liked his surrogate brother.

He'd take down _Alice in Wonderland_ then and hide it when Francis knocked and came into his room with pancakes and a smile as sweet as the maple syrup he'd drizzled over Matthew's breakfast.

And then he'd sit down on the edge of the bed, the worn mattress sinking even beneath his little weight, and put a hand on Matthew's forehead and remark that his fever had gone down quite a bit, and maybe he'd feel up for a walk over to the park that afternoon? They could have a picnic, if he wanted, and then they could watch all the people walking their dogs and playing catch with their children. Get some fresh air, enjoy the nice weather.

And then the people would go home, leaving only Francis and Matthew sitting on the old Afghan Antonio had given Francis years ago. Matthew would run his fingers along the rough fringe, tiny threads catching onto his dry skin like Velcro.

After a moment, Francis would clear his throat. He'd smile again.

And then he'd tell Matthew something he'd known all along:

"I'm sending you back to the foster home."

The air would grow colder and the blanket rougher and Francis's face darker until the dream would fade, and he'd awaken right where he'd been running from.

His parents's home.

* * *

Alfred and Arthur didn't speak as they finished the dishes, the water in the sink turning grayer with each new plate and tray they plunged into the apple-scented suds. Alfred had taken off his glasses a long time ago, the steam having fogged them up too much. He'd put them on the counter, but then Arthur had picked them up by their silver frames and set them up on a shelf where water wouldn't splash onto them.

Alfred smiled. Arthur smiled back. Neither one felt right.

Once the dishes had been stacked and the floor swept, Alfred sank down into a chair and tapped the hanging lamp with his hand. It swung back and forth as he kept pushing it as he would a child on a swing.

Arthur sat down beside him.

"Are you angry with me?"

"Huh?"

"I asked if you were angry with me." Arthur folded his hands and put them on the table. Whoever had wiped it down earlier had left streak marks all along the middle and some sticky residue in the corner. He put his hands back in his lap.

Alfred picked at the residue with his free hand, letting it cake up beneath his fingernails.

"Why'd I be mad at you? You didn't do anything wrong. You brought us that author guy and stuff and he said he liked everything and could get more people in here."

He took a breath. Nope, still hadn't gotten the apple detergent off his hands yet. At least it smelled better than that orangey stuff Francis liked. Sometimes he thought about dousing one of his old t-shirts in that detergent and taping it beneath the kitchen sink in their apartment, but he didn't want to torture Matt as well.

"I thought you might be mad because of what happened earlier. With Francis and Matthew."

"Oh, that. Wait, why would I be mad at you over that?"

"You see—never mind. Let's not talk about it. We should talk about what to do with the cafe next."

Alfred set down a stack of fliers he'd printed off to post in his apartment complex. His neighbors already found him annoying, he said; what could he lose?

Arthur picked them up and proofread them—"Alfred, I don't think you really want people to 'boo' reservations, now, do you?"—while Al outlined some of his other ideas to promote the cafe ahead of the SacMag visit.

"I'm sure people will come if they hear Allistor liked it. There's no way they could stay away. He's a popular author, isn't he?"

"Popular enough."

"So people will come. And they'll come when I put up all these ads. And we can put up signs telling people to vote for us—ooh, we can put that on the sign. 'Vote for us: details inside.' They'll wanna know what the details are, so they'll definitely come in. And then we'll suck them right into loving us and coming back for more."

Arthur snorted, but he didn't shoot Alfred down.

"Know any other authors we can get in here?"

"None in the area, no."

"Aren't you all supposed to know each other and be good friends or something, though? I mean, you all write. And you're all famous."

Arthur put down his pen in the middle of scribbling some corrections on a flier.

"You really think I go around making friends with writers, Alfred?"

"Well, yeah. I was friends with half the waiters in Northern California at one point in college. I was friends with all the other computer science majors."

"You're assuming similarities automatically make friendships."

Alfred shrugged. He thought it a fair assumption. It lined up with everything he'd experienced.

"But Alfred?" said Arthur.

He stopped polishing his glasses with the bottom of his shirt, still wet from where he'd spilled water while washing a mixing bowl earlier, and squinted to make out the author's face.

"Do you really think I have that many friends?"

Alfred put his glasses back on. And with the lenses, he could see the faint sadness in Arthur's eyes, the darkness between the twinkles of light from the dim cafe.

He shook his head. He couldn't water down a truth that the author seemed to have internalized long ago. A fact he'd lived with for years. One that might have chased him into that library or wherever Matt said he'd liked to hole up in during his years at Oxford. One that success couldn't change or gloss over, and one that whatever guilt pinned him down couldn't erase.

Arthur was a sourpuss. He was cranky and cantankerous, not to mention arrogant and rude and snobby. He had little likelihood of winning himself any allies.

But Alfred had discovered that he was also loyal. Loyalty would make any sane person want to put him on her team, but few would want befriend such a grouch. Everyone wanted a good person who did good things—but what about a good person who sometimes did bad things, too?

Maybe that's what true loneliness was. Having so much to give and so few people who would take it, shortcomings and all. And maybe the guilt strong-armed Arthur into cooperation with that sadness and accustomed him to it, like something he put on every day just like his shoes or his shirt. Something he could iron or dress up or polish and shine as he willed, but something that still never went away.

Alfred couldn't let that continue.

"You got me, at least."

Arthur sighed.

"Just look at that. You even misspelled the name of your own cafe. Ninteen-Eighty FOOD."

"Typo, bro."

Arthur tapped his pen against the flier. For a just a second, his eyes held Alfred's. The sadness had softened into gratitude in a louder "thank you" than he could have whispered aloud.

They continued to strategize, Al wondering whether to hand out samples at the nearby park and Arthur drawing up plans for newspaper ads until Alfred cut into his almost tangible mental wall that his concentration had fortified.

"Maybe you'd have more friends and be better with people if your books were friendlier."

"Friendlier?"

Arthur sipped at the cup of tea he'd brewed himself a few moments earlier. The rich scent of bergamot rising with the warm steam comforted Alfred like his mother's gentle hands or the thick arm of his father around his shoulders.

"Yeah. More open. A bit less pretentious. Less about phenomeno-whatical pirates and more about cool people. People you could understand. Like—dude, I am a genius. You should write a book about all of us at Nineteen-Eighty FOOD. Call it _Confessions of a Man Caught in a Semicolon_ or something."

"I do not take suggestions for my books."

Alfred shrugged. "It'd be awesome, though. I'd be a kickass hero."

After a few moments of quiet sips and thoughtful notes, Arthur said, "It'd be about transvestite hermaphrodites, you know."

"Huh?"

"That's what Vonnegut called semicolons. Transvestite hermaphrodites."

"Oh. Well, I'd be a kickass transvestite hermaphrodite, too."

"You really would not."

"Would too."

"Life goals, Alfred."

"So—do you wanna write about transvestite hermaphrodites?"

"No."

"Maybe Mattie would," Alfred said. He rubbed his eyes. The clock o' authors read just after midnight.

Before the days of the cafe, he'd stayed up as late as he liked Googling random crap or playing away on his laptop (a holdover from his comp sci-major days), sometimes even calling his parents before they left for work in D.C. Now that he actually had to get up and run a business, he'd started winding down at old-lady hours.

The day had gone on forever; he wanted to sleep. Arthur would understand, having to get home himself—

"Matthew writes?"

So much for sleep.

"Kind of. I mean, he mostly reads. But sometimes he writes stuff in this red notebook instead." Alfred paused. "He's been doing that a lot more lately, I think. Or I could be remembering wrong."

Arthur set down his teacup on the saucer beside his crumbly biscuits with a quiet clink.

"Do you know their story—Francis and Matthew's?"

"Sorta. I remember when he decided to adopt Matt. He didn't say much about it to me—I thought he'd come home with like a baby or something, and then when he got back to his apartment he had this scrawny guy with him. I had to return the pacifier I'd bought him as a present—I don't think Matthew would have liked it very much." He laughed.

"But something was weird about him," Alfred continued, Arthur folding his hands beneath his chin. "I'm still not sure what. Francis is super protective of him and stuff, and he freaks out at random things. But he's pretty cool. I mean, he's like my brother. I don't care if he's weird."

Arthur nodded. "I was wondering, since they were both so tense earlier. Something's not right in that home."

"Yeah, well—Mattie doesn't tell me a lot about that stuff, but I think he said Francis really wants him to go to college, but Matt doesn't want to go because they can't afford it. Even with his good grades. And I don't think Francis would be getting any more money for adopting a kid, either. So that's probably part of what they're fighting over. I guess it's not even really fighting. They're just… not talking to each other."

Alfred waited for Arthur's reply. He hoped the self-professed great author might have some idea of how he could help his family. Some wisdom or whatever. But the man just nodded again and said, "Okay, I was just curious," hands still folded, teacup still full.

Alfred fell asleep soon after their conversation with his head pillowed on his arms in such a way that he'd have indentations from his rolled-up shirt sleeves all over his face in the morning.

By one o' clock, Arthur had decided not to awaken him. The young man must have been exhausted. Allistor and his crew couldn't have been ideal clients, no matter what Alfred said. They were too snarky, too grouchy, too rowdy. And even if he denied it, Al had to worry more about his family than he showed.

Arthur refilled his teacup a third time and settled into his chair. He couldn't leave the snoring youth by himself. He knew Alfred would be fine on his own, and he had a series of interviews himself the next day, but he didn't think it fair to leave such an honorable young man to doze by himself in an empty, lonely cafe on a dark street, where even the streetlights flickered and no cars came rumbling by.

 _It's probably only insomnia. Many must have it,_ Hemingway had written at the end of "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." And maybe many did have insomnia (certainly not Alfred), but since he had first read the story, Arthur had thought Hemingway meant loneliness instead. With his own lonesomeness filling in, he couldn't leave Alfred to fall into the hole he was pulling Arthur himself out of. Those who lived in the light didn't deserve even a second of such darkness. The world didn't exist to procure justice, nor life to be fair, but he could do some little act of kindness to make it right for one person for one moment.

Arthur took out a notepad from his breast pocket and began to write.

They could both stay late in this clean, well-lighted place.

* * *

To Francis's surprise, Alfred's flier-bombing campaign worked. The publicity from Allistor eased his path, of course (plus the tabloids enjoyed printing the Scot's attacks on Arthur's popularity when they asked him why he'd endorse a cafe the Englishman had slammed), but even his damage control couldn't fix all of Arthur's rude interviews. Alfred's commitment to rising earlier than usual to make and deliver samples of Proust Parfaits to his neighbors and passersby at the park had helped, as had his constant calls to his old food service friends and computer science majors at Sacramento State. He'd even offered to pay out of pocket for some of their drinks and meals for those who complained that they couldn't afford to eat out (all of them).

And then people began to return. First came Elizabeta, who'd even managed to drag Roderich with her. Then the kids from Matthew's school—Tino, Berwald, Emil—showed up together one Friday afternoon. Even the weary tourists with their unfamiliar accents and shy giggles over the menu filtered in, like fish caught with the bait of Allistor's endorsement.

Alfred eventually had more than just the Awesome Oldies to wait on, and his small black book thickened with tips. A few tables stiffed him, of course—children of comic book villains, he called those people—but others left generous sums on their tables (and in dollars, too, unlike Allistor's wad of pounds), sometimes even more than thirty percent. His favorites, of course, were the old guys who left fivers for $2 Franz coffees, neatly folding the bills beneath their coffee mugs. Mattie always picked those tips up with extra care before he handed them off to Alfred after clearing tables and wiping them clean.

He'd returned to work as soon as the customers started trickling back in—with no customers, he really had no work to do: no tables to clean, no dishes to wash—as did Arthur, now having people to seat and drink orders to fill. Once he finally figured out the table chart, that is.

"Artie, I know you're still learning and stuff—and yes, you're too smart for this, I know—but tables 11 and 12 flip sections when we get four people on the floor."

"Rule number five. And of course I know that."

"Then why did you just double-seat section three?"

"I did not. Table 12 is in section four now."

Alfred said nothing but reached over Arthur, flipped the table chart to the page for a four-person floor, and then pointed to table 12, shaded in red like the rest of section three. He then tiptoed away, his hand failing to hold in his giggles.

Arthur had also managed to excel at standing anywhere but at the host podium when customers came in. Alfred didn't mind seating guests in his place, of course, but Arthur had, whether by accident or on purpose, become ignorant of the actual job of a host. He did try, though after he quadruple-seated one of the new waitresses, Alfred thought the time might have come for him to stop trying.

"Hey, Arthur, we're not that busy right now. You wanna try taking that table in the corner by the window for me? They're just two teenagers—they won't be hard at all."

Arthur's eyes widened a little as Alfred tossed him a notepad and pen, but he said nothing and strode over to the two girls sitting in a booth with their menus closed.

"What do you want to eat?" he asked.

Alfred leaned on the podium, hands in his pockets, waiting to see what would happen. Never in his life had he greeted someone like that. He'd offer some pleasantries first, chat about the weather, ask if the two young ladies had seen something they'd like to order. He'd worked long enough in food service to know never to rush girls with hairspray-encrusted curls and bright pink tank tops and matching Uggs.

One of them raised an eyebrow and stared up at Arthur.

"Well, you're pushy."

"Don't say that," the other said. "I could eat him right up with a spoon."

She grinned.

"Pardon me?"

"He's even got that accent," said the girl. "Like, wow. Talk about dreamy."

"Calm down, he's not worth fussing over," said the first teen. "Um, how 'bout Arthur Cakeland. Surely you can get me some of that."

"Are you implying that I can't do my job properly?"

"Well, whadda you think?"

"Ooh, that's a good idea. I want some Arthur Cakeland, too. After that super cute author—"

"Hey, gals." Alfred stepped in front of Arthur, elbowing him out of the way. "I'm so, so sorry, but the Arthur Cakeland we made this morning was a little burned. All black on the edges and stuff. Trust me, you wouldn't want it."

He glanced at Arthur out of the corner of his eye.

"How about we give you a few more minutes to find something else you'd like better, huh?"

The first girl rolled her eyes and flipped her menu open again so fast Alfred swore his hair flew up. He gulped and took two large steps back, motioning for the author to follow him.

"What the hell was that?" Arthur asked once Alfred had half-led, half-tugged him away to the kitchen.

"Look, dude." He ran his hands through his hair. "I can't believe I didn't even think of this. I'm an idiot."

"We all knew that already, thanks. What are you talking about?"

"Those two girls. They either recognized you or were about to."

"And you couldn't have thought of a better excuse to get me out of there than that Francis burned the cake?"

"I always burn it," said Francis over the whir of the mixer. "It suits you."

"Never mind him," said Alfred. He pulled on Arthur's sleeve to keep his attention. "Damn, I don't know how I missed thinking that people would recognize you. It probably would have been fine if you were a host—people don't look at their host's face twice unless it's to complain about wanting a booth instead of a table. But if you're a waiter? Everyone'll know who you are. No one could miss those—"

"Number three." Arthur frowned, drawing even more attention to his unmentionables.

"Right. Right. I meant no one would confuse you for someone else."

Francis snickered as he piped white frosting onto a batch of vanilla cupcakes. Alfred wanted nothing more than to snitch one, but that was beside the point.

"But wouldn't that help business?" asked Arthur. "If people knew I worked here."

"I'd like to think so." Alfred started tapping the hard cover of his black book. Dollar bills peeked out of it like little children curled beneath covers. "But—I mean, given what's happened before, the last time people knew you were here—like, it's just not a good idea."

"Okay." Arthur nodded. "I much prefer that such people don't pester me."

"What, people who want to eat you up with a spoon?"

"Oh do shut up, Alfred."

After that, Alfred decided to have Arthur do odd jobs with Matthew. He didn't know why he hadn't considered that job for him in the first place. They could have their afternoon book club while they cleaned tables or ran errands or stocked the kitchen for Francis.

Alfred put his hands akimbo and grinned.

He wasn't that bad at this running a business thing after all. In fact, given how his plan dovetailed with Arthur's, he might have been better than he realized.

Arthur had been waiting for a chance to talk to Matthew again. With Francis now having Matthew come sit with him in the kitchen after school instead of letting him read at his booth—the one that had belonged to him de facto since Al had opened the cafe—leaving him less time to chat with Arthur. But with the two of them working together to scrub the rough blue cleaning rags in gray water that smelled of chlorine and stroll down to the supermarket in the sunny mid-March weather for sugar, they could chat.

"Alfred says you like to write," said Arthur.

They stopped at the last intersection before the cafe. Alfred tended to race across it even when the orange DO NOT CROSS hand glowed, as though reaching out to slap him for crossing at the wrong time. Matthew shook his head. What a tragic turn to a life of crime.

"I do sometimes," Matthew said. He shifted the plastic bag holding flour and a cracked case of strawberries to his other hand. Arthur had offered—more like insisted—to carry it, but Matthew had picked up the sack without a word. It didn't weigh that much. Really. And he couldn't let Arthur take it.

"What sorts of things do you like to write? I always wrote poetry when I first started."

"You wrote poetry?"

Given what he'd read of Arthur's books, Matthew had guessed the man had studied verse. Even his prose had some sort of meter to it, a precise and tight rhythm. He hadn't, however, expected him to admit to writing poems.

"Of course." The light changed, and they crossed the street, Arthur matching Matthew's quick pace and breathing in the stale, warm air. "Sometimes I still do. The best authors learn from poetry."

In Arthur's case, Matthew thought, poets didn't teach how to excite or thrill readers. But he nodded up at the author all the same.

"I write whatever comes to mind, I guess. Whatever I'm thinking about."

And it wasn't a lie. Just not the whole truth. Matthew didn't know if Arthur wanted to hear the entire story, anyway. Snippets would suffice.

"I'm more of a reader, really—"—that was true—"—and I don't write that much. Or even that often."

"Still, you write," said Arthur, smiling. "Do you enjoy it?"

"Yeah." Sort of. Sometimes. When he wrote about anything but—"It's fun."

They stopped in front of the cafe, where Alfred had begun to tape up the "Vote for Us: Details Inside!" sign, even though they hadn't yet heard whether anyone had nominated Nineteen-Eighty FOOD for the award. Alfred had tried, only to find out neither employees nor owners could nominate their own restaurants. Matthew admired his determination. He waved back at Alfred through the glass and knew that if he could bring himself to love someone, it would be his brother. Perhaps he did love him, deep down, but couldn't say so, neither to himself nor to Al. His heart sank a bit.

"Matthew?" Arthur put a hand on his arm. He jerked away on instinct—he'd brushed the burn scars—and tried to apologize upon seeing the author's face. His words stuck somewhere between his gut and his mouth.

"I'm sorry," said Arthur. Matthew's eyes widened. No, Arthur wasn't supposed to apologize. Matthew had hurt his feelings, not the other way around. He, not Arthur, bore the strain of guilt. "I should have asked first. I just wanted to know if I could read your writing."

Now the words flooded out of the logjam in his mouth.

"No—I mean, I don't think you'll really want to—since it's not that good or anything—"

"Oh, come now, Matthew. I'm a writer. True authors write horrendous first drafts. Although mine are a bit above the curve, of course. Writers know what terrible prose looks like more than anyone else because they write so much of it." He bent down a little, though he and Matthew were the same height. "Please. I'd like to see it. Even just a page or two. No one else has to see it."

Matthew turned to look back at Alfred. He smiled and whistled as he worked, moving a little this way and that, as if dancing to some tune bouncing around in his head.

"Okay. Okay, but just a little."

He pulled the door open and held it for Arthur, but the man was already hanging on to the door from behind.

"Go ahead." Arthur stepped aside, held out his hand, and gestured for Matthew to go in first. A moment later, loosening his vicegrip on the bag in his hand, he obliged.

"Thank you, Matthew," he said, and Matthew didn't fight back against his kindness.

Since Francis wasn't in the kitchen, Matthew had no problems retrieving the red notebook from his backpack and bringing it to Arthur, who was sitting with a hot cup of tea (what else?) at their usual booth.

"Ah, yes, thank you." Arthur stopped with his cup halfway to his mouth to take the book. "Is there one in particular you want me to read?"

"Um, I think the one that begins partway through—no, no not there. You can't read that part." Matthew took the book back. Arthur's expression didn't change; in fact, he almost relaxed a little more, taking another drink of his tea while Matthew flipped through the pages. "Okay, this one. I, well, I wouldn't know, but I think you'd like that one better."

Arthur smiled. Matthew wished he could fall out of the booth.

Alfred hollered and tried to pick them both up.

"We did it, guys. It's gonna happen. We got this." He jumped up and down like a hyper puppy on a pogo stick. "They're coming they're coming they're coming next week."

"Huh?" Matthew wriggled in Alfred's embrace. Arthur just sat there, smile souring by the minute.

"The SacMag people. We got nominated. They're coming next week to check us out. This is happening." He let go of Arthur and Matthew and ran his hands through his hair, grazing his glasses. "This is actually happening holy _shit_ it's actually happening. We gotta go tell Francis. We gotta go tell Francis like right now—come on, guys."

Matthew couldn't say no, and so he followed Alfred out the door to the corner where Francis was stamping out a cigarette. Neither brother noticed Arthur had not joined them.

* * *

With a sigh, Arthur put one hand on the side of his face and shut off his lamp with the other.

He shouldn't have taken the notebook home. He should have just given it back to Matthew when he'd read the story the boy had let him read. He should have told him that, while the writing was mediocre, it had some promise if someone helped him smooth out its kinks—a plot hole here, a poor choice of dialogue there—and he'd be glad to mentor him.

He knew better than to snoop, to read the forbidden pages. Matthew would notice the notebook was missing. He'd worry. He'd stress all night. It'd take over his mind until he found his treasure again. Arthur didn't have an idea of how to explain himself.

Nor did he know how to explain to Francis what he'd read in the latter half of the notebook.

Now he knew. He knew why Matthew shied away from his hand on his arm, refused to call Francis his father, buried his nose in books. Why he chose _Alice in Wonderland_ as his shelter of choice, Matthew had not explained in the stories, but one tiny detail in the midst of this enormous story that had gnawed him to pieces didn't matter.

Arthur didn't sleep much that night. He arose, groggy and sweaty, at five and typed a few pages of his newest book on his Macbook, the keys seeming to stick together, before dressing for work. He walked to the cafe, hoping that the warm air and quiet walk and concrete crunching beneath his feet would help him think of what to tell Francis. Would help him gather his courage. But nothing could prepare him to stand in front of the man in the kitchen, having convinced Alfred to go buy him some more tea at the store ("I'll even give you a few pounds for it." "Dude, you're forgetting this little thing known as American currency." "Oh, just take it and go.").

"And what could you possibly want with me, _Monsieur_ Kirkland?" Francis smirked.

"I know you won't believe me, but this is serious." Arthur held up the notebook. He couldn't tell from Francis's appearance whether he recognized it. "Matthew writes stories. He wanted me to read some. And I discovered something in there."

"Oh, really now?"

"Don't mess around, Francis." Arthur took a deep breath and softened his voice. "Please. Not now. I know, Francis. I know what happened to Matthew as a child."

Francis's eyes widened and his lips drew together in a harsh line.

"How?"

"He wrote stories about it, Francis. He wrote more than a few stories. And they're graphic."

"I don't believe you."

"You don't want to read them, Francis. You really don't."

Even as he spoke, Francis snatched the notebook out of Arthur's hands and flipped through it. He paused when he reached the last few pages.

Then, he dropped the book.

The Frenchman leaned against the wall and put his face in his hands. For a moment, he didn't move; then, he let his hands slide down his cheeks to his jaw.

"He wrote about it," he said, staring at the notebook on the floor, one hand clutching the doorframe. "He wrote stories about it."

"Yes." Arthur paused to clear his throat and think. "I'm sorry, I just… I don't know what to say."

Francis shook his head. "No. Don't say anything. But—did he write anything about me in the other stories?"

Arthur paused.

"Tell me, Kirkland. Don't you dare lie to me. Don't you fucking dare."

"He mostly wrote about his biological parents," he said. He picked up the notebook and clenched it between his fingers. "But he also wrote that he thinks you want to send him back to the foster home."

Francis looked up. He tried to speak but stopped. He laughed a little.

And then he began to cry.

"I don't care what they think or what he thinks or what anyone thinks. He's my son, Arthur. He's my son and those people hurt him." He wiped his eyes and took a breath that came out as a shaky tumult of words. "They hurt him and all I want to do is make it better but he won't let me."

"I know, Francis. I know."

"No. You don't. Matthew's not your child. What would you know about him or how they hurt him?"

Arthur sat down in a chair near the door, all argument gone out of him. Everything had unfolded so fast, but he was trying to understand how he didn't catch it sooner. The tired eyes. The anxiety. The distance from everyone and everything.

He didn't like Francis, but now he found himself seeking the perfect words to comfort him. And the right way to help Matthew.

"Francis, you said Matthew was seventeen. When did you adopt him?"

Francis clutched the edge of the counter and held his hand over his mouth. Arthur put his hand in his pocket and, slowly, took out his handkerchief and offered it to him. Francis looked at him and, just as slowly, took the soft cloth.

"It was less than a year ago. He'd just turned seventeen." He wiped the wet streaks running down his face and then rubbed his eyes with one unsteady hand.

"He'd just turned seventeen," he said again. "I knew I wanted to be his papa. He was so sweet and so kind. I wanted to love him. I wanted to give him everything in the whole world. And then I found out he wouldn't take it. Can you even imagine that?"

"But you did give him everything."

"Aren't you listening? I tried and he won't take it."

"Francis, you said he was seventeen when you adopted him. Do you know what would have happened if you'd decided to adopt a child a year later? He'd have aged out of the system by then. He could have wound up on the street, homeless, with nowhere to go. Don't you see, Francis? You saved his life. You did give him everything."

Arthur did not cry. He was not a man of tears. He prided himself on his stiff upper lip. But even he had a rush of warmth into his face and a sudden dampness in his eyes.

Francis's shoulders slumped, and he said nothing for some time, standing still and twisting the handkerchief around his fingers. The two men listened to the soft hum of the dishwasher, murmuring like a lullaby crooned in a dark night. Arthur tapped his feet on the tile, elbows on his knees. He closed his eyes and wished he could fall asleep there. But he had to get up. He couldn't stay in the warm sheets and soft mattress of his peaceful thoughts. He had to get up. He had to solve this with Francis.

"You need to talk to him." Arthur stood up and walked over to the Frenchman. "You two need to have this conversation as father and son. Have you ever talked about what happened to him?"

Francis shook his head. "I thought it would hurt him. And that was the last thing I wanted. I could never hurt my son."

Arthur nodded and let him continue.

"I knew, though. I saw—I saw some of his scars. And the social workers told me his story. He'd been there in foster care for years. Some of the families took him in, but they didn't last."

"You're all he has to hang on to. You have to make up for all that."

"Never mind he likes you better, clearly." Francis glared. Arthur held his ground. "He'll smile at you and talk to you. He'll let you read his work. He trusts you."

"But you said it yourself, yeah? You're his father. I can pretend if I want, but I'll never take your place." Arthur tucked the damp handkerchief back into his pocket. "But I do have one question."

"What?"

"Why _Alice in Wonderland_? Do you know about that book?"

"That. book." Francis grit his teeth. "I guess his parents liked to read, too. Had a whole library. When they took Matthew away, that was the book standing on his father's nightstand. The bookmark in it was his, too. He took them both and hasn't given them up since. Though he's never gone past the bookmark as far as I—no. Don't tell me he finished the book, Arthur. Please."

Arthur only shook his head.

Francis blanched.

"I'm not Alfred—thank heaven—but I think you should have today off," said Arthur. "Pick up Matthew from school."

"He won't ride with me anymore. He walks himself to and from school."

"Then walk home with him. Spend the afternoon with him. And then talk to him. Take care of him. You have to work through this together."

Francis sighed and put his hands in his pockets. Arthur's body wanted nothing more than to collapse to the floor. He'd expected a difficult, hard conversation, but not one this tiring.

Alfred popped into the kitchen a short time later with Arthur's tea. He took it and set it on the shelves off the prep area with the other boxes of PG Tips. Alfred and Francis spoke in soft tones that mixed with the swirling of water in the dishwasher, and Arthur again wanted to lean against the shelf and let the peace he felt settle deep within him.

And while Alfred opened the cafe short-staffed and Arthur sat down with his Macbook and a profound inner silence he couldn't yet put to paper, Francis returned home and sat on the couch, thinking. That afternoon, he drove to Matthew's white-brick school and took him home, setting his backpack down beside the door before they went for a walk to the park. Francis spread out the rough holey blanket Antonio had given him a few years ago, and they ate cheese and crackers and little sandwiches he'd made that morning. College students jogged in the park and moms pushed strollers and children played fetch with their dogs. Francis asked Matthew about school, and he talked about English and French and calculus until the sun went down in rays of pink and the streetlights came on. His dry skin caught like Velcro on the blanket as he ran his fingers along the worn fringe. The dusk air grew thick and heavy, promising rain and a good night for sleeping through safe under piles of blankets and snuggled up to warm pillows.

Francis smiled and told Matthew they'd better go home unless they wanted to get rained on, and he didn't want that, did he, dear heart, and Matthew said no and so they returned to the apartment. And Francis sat back down on the limp couch cushions and motioned for his son to sit down beside him. He smiled again.

"I want to talk to you, _mon coeur_ ," he said.

And he took Matthew's hand.


End file.
